Evan Valentine, Stay-at-Home Dad

Like everything else in my life, this blog goes in very severe phases. During the times that I actually want to work on it, I develop a backlog of saved drafts to post on later dates where I may not be so motivated. The last several days have been a pretty good example of that. One of my many Useless Facts post, a little post about what I listen to on satellite radio, blah blah. These were pre-prepared.

We got this kid a music-themed activity table. It stands about 18" off the ground and has about 25 buttons you can push and get different responses. It has "speaking mode" and "music mode" which has no words. He only likes it if I put Cheerios in the pocket. Then it's his favorite.

Weekend was great. Concerts were great. Thanks again to Martha and Eric for holding us a table at Leon Redbone. We had good seats. Leon Redbone is a very odd man. Every time I see him in concert, there is more silence between songs, and more weird things like playing the same songs twice. He did two doubles in his set on Friday. Weird.

Stephen had a few "firsts" yesterday. He took his first step (from holding onto the dog to holding onto his mom). Jaime doesn't think it was a step, but he was holding onto the dog, then he let go. He moved one of his feet forward (towards Jaime) and then planted it on the ground. Then he grabbed onto Jaime. I consider that a step. He also had his first (two) french fries.

I hate it when I come up with a new tag for this blog after the fact. A conversation I had with Krystle last night made me think I should have a "firsts" tag where I can track the approximate date of all all Stephen's firsts. First time sitting up, rolling over.. all that. So now I am searching through 330 posts to find firsts and re-tagging them retroactively. What a pain.

Edit: Okay, searching for things like first, roll, skills, and sitting, I was able to come up with a fair amount of "firsts." You can follow the the tag here. I was not able to find a real date on when he first sat up on his own, but it seems to be somewhere in the middle of the 4th month.

I couldn't be more satisfied right now. We're just preparing to be snowed in, eating frozen "California Pizza Kitchen," and catching up on recorded shows. I walked the dogs already, and we're waiting for the heavy snow to kick in.

Jaime stopped at Burger King and the gas station on the way home. She arrived bearing Whoppers, french fries, beer, and cheerios. Stephen just ate his first Cheerios a few hours ago, and he took it like a champ. He had quite a good time, and seems to be mastering the pincer grasp.

The local news makes it seem like there is a madness all around, but I saw other people walking their dogs, nice and calm, enjoying the weather. The grocery store was calm and empty this morning. All is well.

There have supposedly been nearly 600 traffic accidents already today in this area.

We're going to bathe Stephen and enjoy our night. Cheers.

Just six weeks after we got 22" of snow, we are predicted to get 18-24" 20-30" over the next two days. The 22" was record snowfall for the month of December, and the snow this weekend is supposed to be the most snowfall in a century for the area (record snowfall for this area was 28" in 1922). It just started snowing about five minutes ago. My dogs' lives are going to get hard for the next five days.

Fridays find us at the end of a grocery cycle, so I went to the store to pick up a few things this morning. They were out of a lot of stuff, but they had everything I needed. Yesterday must have been a record grocery shopping day; everything is like the end of days around here when it snows. People are referring to this as "snowpocalypse," sigh. We just had this much snow on December 19th!

Stephen was practically falling asleep at the grocery store, so I just gave him a little milk when we got home and he instantly went down for a nap. That allowed me to get a shower, my first since Monday. Maybe he will like the snow more this time around. We'll see (anything for a photo-op).

Jaime is signed up for automatic updates about baby development. They have been pretty funny for a while, as Stephen is well ahead of the developmental milestones. This is the one from today, titled Your 8-month-old: Week 3

One day you'll walk into your baby's room and find that little person standing up, grinning at you. Many 8-month-olds are strong enough to pull themselves onto their feet and stay there by holding on to you or a piece of furniture. A somewhat comical aspect of this wonderful development is that some babies know how to get up -- but not back down again. They will stand and stand as long as they can hold on, and finally either tumble down or cry to be "rescued."

I'm pretty sure he could do this in his sixth month. He has mastered the sitting back down part, too. That's one less thing to worry about, I guess.

Wow. Way to go, NFL. Worst playoffs ever. There were so many blowouts and boring games, I don't even know where to begin. Despite there being some upsets along the way, the two teams with the best records made it through to the Superbowl. How boring. We could have predicted three months ago that these would be the two teams that made it to the Superbowl, and we would have been right. Where's the drama? Where is this "parity in the NFL" that we hear so much about?

The playoffs ended on a pretty deflating note last night. Brett Favre, after coming out of retirement again and exceeding everyone's expectations, proved he is still Brett Favre (and that is not a good thing). With his team in field goal range, he decided to make a risky throw on 3rd & 15 that was intercepted. Keep in mind that it was a tie game with fifteen seconds left in the 4th quarter. The reckless gunslinger had to take one more shot--had to throw away yet another season trying to be a hero. All he had to do was hold onto the ball and run a couple of open yards and the Vikings would have been able to kick a field goal and win the game in the final seconds. Instead the Saints marched down the field in overtime and won the game 31-28 because Favre had to try to win the game all by himself. It was all too similar to the NFC championship game in the 2007 season, where Favre was an interception machine and single-handedly lost the game for his team.

What a letdown.

Well, Steve spent maybe ten hours here yesterday. I think we finished our album, at least the recording aspect of it. I just have to get everything in order and make sure all the fade-betweens are perfect. I'm happy with it. It's the best of everything we have, and it's 78:45 out of a possible 80:00 that can fit on a cd. Couldn't squeeze more on there if we tried. So, we'll see what happens. It seems the rates for mastering have gone up, but I'll try to get the old rates honored. With the new rates it will cost us between 900-1000 dollars. Ouch. We now have gathered about a hundred bucks through our bandcamp site, and Steve has put forty bucks into the pot. Not quite there yet by any stretch, but we'll make it happen.

Steve and I are going to try to set up a scheduled weekly time to work on stuff. We can't exactly call it band practice because we don't practice, but it's like a combination Super Nintendo and audio recording time.

We went bowling this morning and Stephen's nap schedule is completely screwed. He has slept for a total of 30 minutes all day, when he should have woken up from a 2+ hour nap a little bit ago. I just made the suggestion that we go grocery shopping right now so we could be finished by the time football starts, but then I realized the error of my ways when Stephen started to lose his temper and remind me that he needs to nap very badly. Jaime is upstairs feeding him and trying to put him down right now, and it doesn't sound like she is having much success.

I contacted a title company to get the title of this house transferred to me and Jaime's names. It is currently listed in me and my father's names. We'd like to get it squared away before it becomes an issue down the road when/if we sell this place. I throw the "if" in there because ideally we would rent this place out when we buy a new house. We have less than 9yrs to go on this mortgage. Money situation is good right now. Hopefully we can pay off our new car or Jaime's student loans (or both, but probably not) after taxes this year. Will be nice to not have a car payment again. If we paid off the car (which we just got last April) then we'd have 303 more dollars per month to play with. We shall see.

Saturday was the big Fantasy Football party at S&S' house. Since Steve won, he put his winnings (came out $175 ahead) towards party snacks and invited all of the losers over to enjoy them during the games Saturday night. We had to leave at 3:30 for that. Jaime went to her Weight Watchers meeting in the morning (she has lost 14.2 pounds in six weeks). Just before she got back, Stephen went down for a nap. I have been a little sick for a few days, so I took a nap in the early afternoon on Saturday. Then we went over there and watched yet another blowout. We really screwed up the dogs' schedule with that party and Davis crapped in the basement. I guess he liked it, because he peed in the basement this morning. Davis hasn't made a mess in the house in at least 9 months, but apparently it was just because we were good about keeping to a schedule. Leave the house one time and it has all gone to hell. Honestly, it's not that big of a deal because he goes on the concrete, but don't tell Davis that.

Sunday was chore day. Three loads of laundry. Vacuum the main floor. Vacuum the stairs. Watched football. Cleared some stuff off the DVR. The highlight was definitely getting lunch at Don Pablo's at 11am. Oh yes, and we both took a nap while Stephen napped in the afternoon.

In our kitchen, we have a little fish tank that hangs on the wall. It holds maybe ⅔ of a gallon. This is the only fish tank I've ever maintained that I actually like. It's easy to clean out and it looks cool and post-modern just hanging on the wall. We got it as a wedding present and have had the same fish since then--a blue gourami named Henry. Yesterday when I fed the dogs their dinner at 5pm, I grabbed the fish food to feed Henry, and he was gone. No corpse to flush or anything like that. Just vanished like a fart in the wind. I suppose he jumped out of his tank and fell over five feet to the floor. Maybe one of our animals ate him as he was flopping around, or maybe he flopped his way under the refrigerator and we'll begin to smell him soon. I really do not understand what happened; it was kind of disturbing to realize the little fish tank was actually empty. The only thing I can think of is this: the wall that the fish tank hangs on is a shared wall with our dining area. Maybe when the vacuum is pushed against that wall he freaks out. Maybe this time he freaked out a little too much and jumped out. That's the only thing I can think of. He is old and docile; he mostly just lays on the bottom of the tank these days. I really don't know what happened. It sucks.

Ttyl, Henry

I got a Ukulele for Christmas from one of my cousins. I've been playing it a lot, but it's hard to have any variety. Like the banjo, it seems to be stuck in a certain key signature, with all other keys being difficult to play. I really like it though, and Stephen is quite interested. This little guy is surrounded by music. His first instrument will be a harmonica, then ukulele lessons from his old man.

I know mashups are all the rage for 14 year olds, but I really like this one. I've listened to it a lot of times. A YouTube comment sums up my feelings perfectly: I actually like this .. when I know I shouldn't =|

Every weekend is more and more busy.

On Saturday at 11:10am, we saw Avatar in digital 3d. I have to say, I was not expecting much when we walked into the theater. I am not a fan of action movies, fantasy movies, or most any movie that cost over $50million to make. Having said that, I liked it more than I thought I would. There was definitely some poor acting by the main character and Michelle Rodriguez, but it wasn't horrible. And also, the mineral that they are mining is called "unobtainium." Really, James Cameron? Unobtainium? I understand that the term is sort of tongue-in-cheek, but it just sounds so awful when the actors try to say it with a straight face. The political and human rights side of it kind of bashed you over the head. I've heard James Cameron say that his pro-earth messages are subtle. Far from it. This is the non-cartoon version of FernGully.

Visually, it was definitely a step-up from anything I've ever seen. The first major motion picture to use CGI extensively was Jurassic Park, and to be honest, CGI characters haven't gotten that much better since Jurassic Park in my opinion. Every time Jurassic Park is on TV, I always marvel that the CGI in 1993 looked about 80% as good as most effects today. But Avatar was a step up. All the scenes where they were wandering around at night were phenomenal looking. This must be what it felt like when Star Wars came out.

Most people told me that it was not worth seeing unless you saw it in 3d. I guess 3d is the new trend to get people to go to the movies. This is marketed as some "new kind" of 3d, but this technology has been around about as long as I have. I saw 3d just as good as that (using the same technology of different polarization in each lens) in Disney World when I was six years old (Captain EO ftw). Fake 3d is more of a distraction for me than anything else. On one hand it's kind of cool, but on the other hand it's just not quite right and I'm always looking at the background instead of the foreground. Everything is just a little "off."

Then we ate at California Pizza Kitchen before picking up Stephen. Avocado egg rolls. Barbecue chicken pizza. Couple beers.

Yesterday was chores all day. I cut my hair, did four loads of laundry, and installed our new baby gate that can accommodate the weird angles and banisters at the top of our stairs. Installing that thing was no easy task. Seems like I still need to make a few adjustments, but it is going to work. We also went grocery shopping, cleaned up the house a little, and watched football.

Every NFL game this weekend turned out the way I wanted except for the Cowboys winning. That kind of pissed me off, actually. And of course, we were grocery shopping for the second half (and overtime) of the Cardinals/Packers game--the only good, exciting game all weekend. I think the Cardinals are my favorite team in the playoffs. Kurt Warner is an absolute machine in the post-season. When I was young, my family watched Joe Montana tear it up in the playoffs nearly every year, but I think Kurt Warner is just as good. He is every bit as calm as Joe Montana was, and more athletic. Warner's problem is that he will not run for yards... ever (and sometimes he likes to throw five interceptions in a game, but not in the post-season). Yesterday he completed 29 passes with a nearly 90% completion rate, and he threw more touchdowns than incompletions. Pretty staggering to throw five touchdowns and only four incomplete passes all day. The Cardinals were so efficient on offense that they only had five 3rd downs in the entire game.

We randomly started receiving Rolling Stone magazine addressed to my wife a while back. I'm not sure if someone bought us a subscription as a cruel joke or what. This month's edition features two massive articles about global warming. They do a big spread on the "earth's biggest enemies" and trash McCain and a lot of big oil executives and such. Just when I thought Rolling Stone couldn't get any worse. I know they have always focused on some things other than music, but how can you claim to be a voice of the counter-culture when you espouse the views of a major political party and Lady Gaga is on every other page?

My wife volunteered to walk the dogs for me this morning because we slept in and she didn't have time to do her normal morning routine. I said thanks and went back to sleep. Turns out it was nine degrees outside. Oops. Now she will never volunteer to do that again.

I was doing very well at making at least one post per day, but over the past 15 days I have fallen off. Things are back to normal now and hopefully I can continue.

As a complete aside, here is an old video that makes me laugh and cringe at the same time.