I have decided that today is going to be a good day. I got the kitchen faucet installed last night (no leaks). I couldn't find one of my adjustable wrenches, so I bought some slip-joint pliers at the grocery store, which turned out to do the trick for only four dollars. Tools included, a new faucet cost us about 45 dollars and 17 days of downtime (sorry Jaime). While trying to go to sleep, I had visions of my handywork coming undone and flooding our house all night.

This morning I made myself some coffee (something I very rarely do at home for some reason) and a grilled cheese sandwich for breakfast. Grilled cheese is one of my low-budget specialties. I use white american cheese and olive oil instead of butter. I just sat Stephen up in his high chair while I ate. I felt like I should have had a newspaper while I ate my breakfast, even though I haven't read a newspaper at any stage of my life. After that I fed Stephen a new food: turkey. So far we have only tried two Stage 1 foods. He liked the carrots but disliked the sweet peas. Today I busted out the pureed turkey with turkey broth. He more than disliked it; he hated it. He was a good sport and choked down 7-8 spoonfuls of it, though. Meanwhile his bib was covered in disgusting turkey product because he was involuntarily leaking it out of his mouth.

While all this was going on, Raffi was playing in the background. I fully endorse Raffi as a musician for children. He plays mostly traditional songs, always using real instruments (no fake keyboard sounds to save money). He also sings a handful of songs in French, which is early exposure to another language. I enjoyed children's music even before having a child. I owned Leadbelly sings for kids--Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger too. It is good stuff and something I can play for my child without getting enraged. He responded positively to Raffi as early as seven weeks old! (May have all been in my head though).

Mr. Stephen slept 10.5 hours last night, so I can't expect the usual lengthy morning nap, but when that nap comes I'm going to check out the new webcast version of The Mike O'Meara Show. Starting yesterday, a webcast version of the show is available on their website. When the mighty WJFK flipped formats to become a sports talk station, Mike O'Meara had the rug pulled out from underneath him and his nationally syndicated show was canceled. He had been a staple radio personality in this area and many other major markets for decades. Anyhow, they are trying to get picked up by financing their own show with the addition of Oscar Santana. A better way to check it out may be to subscribe to their RSS Feed where you can actually download .mp3s of each day's show instead of streaming it off their site.

I run into this problem all the time because I do not install any programs that I deem unnecessary onto my PC. For me, virtually nothing is necessary. This means that I can not view .MOV files, for instance, because Quicktime tries to take over your computer and associate every file known to man with its bloated software. Extend that example to virtually every file type out there (I can't load Word documents, all kinds of stuff). To convert files to a type that I can actually view means I have to install software to convert them, which I do not do. Here is the solution: Zamzar.com. This site converts a seemingly endless number of file types to many other comparable forms. Movie files, audio files, documents, image formats, you name it. Here is a list of the supported file types. Pretty cool. Sure will help me out a lot.

EDIT: Once again, my prediction was dead wrong. After waking up at 6:30am, this child went to sleep at 8:30am. Maybe it was the tryptophan (hardy har).