Tuesday, July 30, 2002

One other thing for now

I forgot to mention this in my previous entry, but we took David to his two-month appointment last Wednesday. The vital stats are:

Height - 23.5 inches
Weight - 11 lb, 7 oz.

He's now up to the 50th percentile for weight (right on average, and up from his last visit), and up to the 30th percentile for height (up from the 20th at his last appointment). So he's catching up to the full-term babies pretty quickly. This coming Friday he'll be ten weeks old. Already.

His next doctors' appointment is at the end of September.

Quoth The Rock, "Know your role!"

In the last few days, I have learned my role.

It's to change diapers. I'm real good at that. I can do a change quickly, cleanly, and I can avoid letting him hose down the room while I'm changing him. However, he doesn't like when I feed him - despite my best efforts to feed him slowly and burp out the air, I'm almost always the one who gets greeted with a big, Vesuvius-like fountain of molten formula (and soy formulas reek, big-time!). Jane has the knack for feeding and burping, luckily, so he isn't starving.

I do have one other parenting skill, though - the Daddy Trick. I think every daddy has someting similar, but basically if I lie down and put him face-down on my chest, he'll fall asleep in a couple of minutes.

Darn near guaranteed.

Monday, July 29, 2002

The Top Three (plus one) I use a Mac:

3: MacOS X is Unix, dangit! And Unix just plain rocks.

2: Their hardware looks and runs sweet. I've never had a klunker yet, and I've been using them in one form or another since 1987. Nowadays I'm using a TiBook 667.

1: I run Windows systems all day. When I get home, I like to turn my brain off and just _use_ the computer. Macs give me that, even though it's got Unix inside.

1a: Keeping a Mac secure is a darned sight easier than worying about Windows viruses!

Saturday, July 20, 2002

Oh my, that was spectacular!

I got up at about 5:30 to feed David. As mentioned previously, we're making him about 6 oz. worth of food, so he started out by gulping down about 2 oz. Then I worked on him until I got a few hearty burps. I picked him up and went into my room with him, so I could read the headlines for the day on my Mac while feeding him.

When I do that, he likes to lie stretched out on my chest and that works out well, because I can feed him with one hand and mouse with the other. Multitasking!

Anyhow, he guzzled about another 3 oz., then as he slowed down I started to put my hand on him in preparation to hoist and burp him again. He spit up a little, but then:

All the gas came up. Along with most of the previous 5 oz. of formula. In a fountain.

He soaked my bathrobe, his bib, his outfit, the floor, my wristrest, and the cheap USB keyboard I have on my PowerBook (hence the Apple icon for this entry!). It was impressive, to say the least.

With Jane's help, we got him cleaned up and after successfully getting the last ounce or so into him, he's sleeping off the aftershocks right now. And I've been doing laundry for the last hour since my robe needed it and we filled his hamper with everything. The keyboard may be salvageable. It's been opened and cleaned.

Lesson learned today: burp him more often, no matter how fast he wants to eat. Wow. And keep a healthy distance from your PowerBook when feeding. If you must sit at a computer, sit at one of the cheap ones. That was too close for comfort!

Thursday, July 18, 2002

One more thought for the day

As I was driving back from lunch today, I saw a woman outside her house doing some yardwork. She was wearing a basketball jersey over a t-shirt.

The jersey had a player's last name on it - but not Michael Jordan or Allen Iverson - not even Paul Pierce (big here in Boston):

It had "Rizzotti" on it, with a "21" under that.

The only player with that name/number is former UConn star and pro player Jen Rizzotti. A female player. With her jersey being worn by a regular old person on the street. There's something almost inexplicably Right about that.

You know, maybe there's some hope in this world, after all...

Yippee! A breakthrough!

Last night was a milestone - we fed the Dude at around 10:30ish (which usually takes about a half-hour), then put him to bed. He started crying at about midnight, and I made him a fresh bottle and fed him again - he drank about 3/4 of it.

And the next we heard from him was when I went into his room to feed him at 6:15 this morning - he slept all night!

After I woke him up and fed him, he needed more still - looks like he's now carrying about a 6 oz. tank instead of the 4 he's been packing in. The more we can feed him, the longer it takes to digest it all, meaning the more time between feedings. This, for sure, is a Good Thing.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002

And now, my second Top Three

Two entries on the same day - whoa!

Anyhow, here's my Top Three Shortstops in Baseball:

3: Derek Jeter. If this was based strictly on the ability to make clutch plays from Labor Day onwards, he might be on this list all alone (as much as I hate the Yankees). Solid defense, good power, very good average, makes big plays. I'm not convinced he'd be quite as good on a lesser team, though. Jeter is probably the best complimentary player in baseball, and if I have built a team that I thought was just one player away from winning it all, I'd want him on my team.

2: Nomar Garciaparra. Nobody will ever hit .400 again. But if it happens, it'll probably be Nomar who does it. He hits for power, average, and the same thing that keeps him from hitting .400 is what makes him so dangerous - Nomar can (and does) hit balls way out of the strike zone. Better dicipline would get him on base with walks more and cut the at-bats down. Nomar would be at the top of the list except for his defensive flaws: he makes plays no other shortstop could possibly make but he's prone to throwing the ball away (of course some of those throws would be base hits against a different shortstop). His range is amazing.

1: Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod has it all. He'll probably break Aaron's home run record if he stays healthy (of course, Bonds might have it by then). He hits for average, power, and he plays an excellent defense. His only flaw is that he's got terrible taste in teams - had he not just gone for the money, he'd probably have been the difference in Seattle last year and he'd have a ring today.

Granted, this list doesn't have any NL guys on it, but I don't get to see them all year.

Josh's first Top Three List

...because I'm too darn lazy for a Top Ten:

Top Three Golf Movies:

3: Happy Gilmore. Yeah, it's dumb, but the prototypical Adam Sandler aggressive New Hampshire moron character was at it's best here. Unfortunately, it directly led to his other films. But this one made me laugh.

2: Tin Cup. Ron Shelton is the only director who can get squat out of Costner. And he's at his laconic best when he plays broken-down small-time jocks.

1: Caddyshack. Duh. The best golf movie ever, and one of the funniest movies ever. Anarchy at it's finest.

Wednesday, July 10, 2002

Idle wrestling thought...

You know, when Triple H blew out his left quad last year in a tag match (Trips and Austin vs. Jericho and Benoit), not only did he finish the match on one leg, but he took Jericho's submission move (the Walls of Jericho) without complaint. He carried the match several additional minutes despite an injury that had him in surgery the next day and cost him six months of rehab.

I admired that work ethic - I'm not Aich's biggest fan, but that's a truly dedicated performer.

So last night, I'm watching WWE RAW, and in his first match back after 3 months on the injured list (a 10-man tag, wtih the NWO plus Benoit and Eddy Guerrero) going up against Bubba and Spike Dudley, Booker T, Goldust, and Rob Van Dam - is Kevin Nash. Good match, right?

After about 10 minutes of battling, Kevin getts tagged in. After a couple of moves, he trips in the middle of the ring, folds up, and collapses in the corner. Guess what - he tore his quad, too. It took 17 seconds.

However, when Nash went down, he stayed down. Everyone else covered up, and they improvised a new finish (Big Show pinned Booker). Granted Nash is over 10 years older than Hunter, but still.

So now, after 3 months out rehabbing a torn bicep, he'll be out about another 6 months or so. Good investment, Vince!