The X-Man has arrived!

I thought that we should take this time to announce the arrival of X-man into the world. Vesper valiantly delivered him at 1:47 AM on March 28th after 25 hours and 47 minutes of labor. (Now all of you know not to mess with Vesper...she'll outlast you any day) I believe the common information to provide is that he weighted in at 8lbs 15.6oz and was 21 inches long. I'm sure Vesper will write a bit later concerning the labor and the new man in our lives. But...in the mean time, please take time to enjoy these pictures.

He Brought Balance to the Force Sooner than We Ever Imagined

I just found this funny picture and had to share. It's nice to see that Anakin and Yoda were able to have a reconciliation and work together before they passed on.

Easter 2008

Ah Easter, finally the passage of the rite to finally wear spring things again, you know, white shoes and white pants, etc. Unfortunately for me, the weather was particularly horrendous this Easter, and I was forced to wear a big ugly rain jacket over my beautiful mostly white Easter outfit. Oh well, spring will get here eventually in Seattle, you know, by July the 4th or so!

Froggy posing with our Easter baskets and his tiny Easter egg that had a squeaky lobster and dog treats. Seriously, he's lickin' his chops already excited about it!

Gawain and I pose for our annual Easter shot, hopefully this is one of my last pregnant shots, considering I'm past due and set to be induced on Thursday.

Decorating Easter eggs, always a treat when using Star Wars egg decorating kits!

Also thought we would try out an Transformers egg decorating kit, clearly not as cool.

The completed Star Wars egg series for this year. See how it compares to last year's set!

Reminiscing on the Coming Spring

Those of you who have or do live in Washington will understand the cruelty of February. In the midst of the gray and cold, many February's offer up one week of false hope that spring has arrived. Amazing and beautiful blue skies accompanied by temperatures in their 60's, or upper 50's at the least. If you don't watch yourself, you will end up with a jagged razor pressed to your inner arms by March when the cold and gray return and dominate until very late Spring...and then the gray sticks around until the end of July. Well, Vesper and I are no fools. When we saw and felt this February's weather ignis fatuus we threw Froggy in the car and boogied on down to Lincoln Park to soak up as much of the goodness as we could before it all blew away like a cruel dream.

Froggy was very excited and more than a bit impatient for Vesper to join him on the trail.

As seen in the picture we were not the only ones with the foresight to take advantage of the brief respite.

We even found this fantastic drift wood fort on the beach. (Complete with dried Christmas Tree...for instant fiery death!)

The weather even made the ferries look appealing. (Though the fleet is full of ancient, rusting, cracking death traps)

Lest you become too jealous of the visual and sensual satisfaction that was heaped upon us on this warm summer day...well...let's just say that there was at least one large crack in the perfect day's facade.

And yes...there was even an evil eye sighting that made all hobits run for cover.

But not even these affronts to decency and goodness could keep Froggy down from enjoying this wonderful day.

As an aside...Vesper and I received honorable mention in Marie's St. Patrick's Day Limerick Contest. Take a jaunt on over there to see the fantastic silliness.

I Guess I Love to Embarrass Myself (One More Chance)

In an effort to find something a bit more interesting (read - ear bleeding) than my usual posts (the usual photolog or other non-interesting item) I've decided to embarrass the living crap out of myself.

Ever since 1996...yes, my freshman year of high school, I have had a 4-track, guitar (1 acoustic, 1 electric), bass guitar, keyboard, and a microphone and have spent countless hours having fun writing and recording (badly...i've never had the patience for perfection...or even acceptable quality standards) my own brand of music. I haven't really had time the last few years to record much music, and recently I've been pulling out some of the old songs for a listen. Here are my findings:

- I sing through my nose...though it gets better (or lesser) the closer we get to the present
- Occasionally I'm off-key (especially when self-harmonizing)
- I hate writing lyrics, and it shows
- I don't have the patience to go back and fix a bad note if there are only 1 or 2
- And as embarrassing as it is...and as much as I don't enjoy my voice...I actually found myself enjoying the actual instrumental portions of the music.

So, I've decided to post a song every week or so from my "back catalog". I have over 80 of them...but many are faaaaaaaaaaar too humiliating to share...so we'll maybe trot out 20 or so.

One last item before we get to the horror...THE HORROR!!!. To act as a FAQ and head off the usual questions that come up...1) I do play all instruments and that is my voice singing poorly. 2) As a rule I don't write songs about myself or any situation I've been in. I knew it would be too awkward to talk about if I ever played them for anyone. There is only 1 exception to this rule...and I'll have to talk to the person I wrote it for to see if they're cool to have the song show up on here at one time or another.

Okay...so...without further adieu...I give you..."One More Chance" written in the year 2000. (spoken in the high pitch voice of Conan O'Brien)

In which I may be described as "all baby", but dude, Baby is HUGE!!

Inspired by the beautiful shots of my friend and her pregnant belly done by a professional photographer (lucky), I thought I would share some of my own. She is due only a couple of weeks after me, but she looks a lot tiny-er than I look! Not fair! I hope that you will agree, based on recent posts, that its time for Baby X to burst forth!!(at least that's how I feel!) ps: I would link to the said beautiful belly shots of my friend, but no permission and true identities are revealed at her site, so I must refrain in order to protect, trust me when I say they are very cute though!

In the beginning, there were tiny boobs, a semblance of a waistline, and a poofy butt from poofy butted capri pants (or just a poofy butt)

Now there are bigger boobs, no semblance of a waistline, a bamboon butt from my couch in the background, and a huge load of laundry to be folded. At least Froggy is cute!

Beacuse its so bizarre, of course I have to share!

As I near the end of my pregnancy, I thought I would share with the interweb something truly bizarre. I'm sure every pregnant lady out there has seen this before, but still, you have to admit, its totally weird!!!!! I guess he wants out as much as I want him out! Due date is still set for the 20th. Any bids on size?

(Ummm...I guess its kind of long (17 sec) so you don't have to watch the whole thing...just enough to be weirded out)

Captain Kirk Will Blow Your Mind

With my wife and I are expecting our first baby (boy) on the 20th of March, one of the duties that I have undertaken (since I mocked all the options that were presented to me) was to pick out the outfit that our little Baby X would wear home from the hospital. I didn't want our fantastically cool and suave baby boy to make his maiden voyage in a yellow outfit with sheep or any other normal baby outfit. (Because let's face it, with us as his gene pool he will most likely NOT be a normal baby.) As great and wonderful as those outfits are for everyday life (and please don't get me wrong, we are so thankful that we have them) they just aren't up to snuff for the all important trip home.

So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Instead of searching the internet, or overpriced, chic baby boutiques, for an appropriate outfit I decided that I would make a fittingly awesome onesie for our soon to be awesome baby's trip home. The genesis of the character in the onesie came from Heidi. I was talking to her about the idea of making a onesie for the baby and she very sagaciously recommended Captain Kirk to me. After a half-hour or so of searching I found the following picture and the words came to my mind like a revelation from God. (Though the words aren't nearly as profound as an actual revelation from Father.)

Thank you Captain Kirk for all that you are and for being an inspiration to us all.