Oh, the idiocy

So my sister, in usual idiotic form, has decided that as today would have been my dad's 60th birthday that she's going to go out and get a tattoo. Oh and by the way would I like to come along and get one too?

I suspect that eventually in life I will get some ink but certainly not on a minutes notice. I'm far more careful and methodical for that. I want to draw it out a couple million times as vector art before I start marking up my skin...

It begged the question for me, at what point do you draw the line on remembrance? For example, should I be celebrating the 261th birthday of von Goethe today? No, I shouldn't be, and let me tell you why. IT IS CRAZY TO DO SO! You don't get to keep celebrating birthdays when you're in the ground... at least as far as I'm concerned. :)

The first ultrasound...

So we had our first official ultrasound on Monday. Baby looks healthy - all the appropriate parts are there. It was pretty cool because the baby was kicking while the ultrasound was happening so Carol was able to prove out definitively that the kicking that she thinks she's feeling is in fact the baby.

The sonographer advised that she believes the due date will move up 10 days to January 9th based on size of baby. It's a biggun'.

Tyler and his girlfriend are about a month ahead of us and he just felt the baby move for the first time so I figure I have a while to wait still...

Oh, and sonographer has put forth that baby is a boy. Jury is still out until delivery day - as long as we have a boy and girl I'm personally indifferent as to which comes first.

All in all, it was great day.

Crow tastes good some days

I find it personally amusing to look back on my life and how vehement I have felt at times and how ridiculous my positions were in retrospect.

The example that I have in my mind in particular today is how I felt pre-20. I was so against kids that it's unreal. Putting it succinctly, I had this belief that someone being the son of a drug addict would necessarily imply that I would both be an addict and additionally that I would similarly pass it on like some kind of unending transitive relationship.

I remember quite vividly thinking to myself that if I could only bring myself to tolerate the concept of gay sex that I'd be a lot happier as a gay male. I've never particularly felt the need for social approval or participation, generally speaking I did and do prefer "stereotypical male" company, and as a rule I've found that the gay friends I've had over the year have frankly been a better class of people as a whole than my straight friends. The thing that I didn't get pre-20 that I understand as a somewhat more mature adult is that if the thought of giving or receiving male-male sex turns you off then you're probably not gay, as much as you might like to pretend that it would make your life easier. (I suspect it wouldn't) Also I didn't know enough about statistics to recognize that a relatively small sample size generally speaking implies that inferences based on data are shaky at best.

I remember arguing against the theory that the purpose of life was to procreate. To be honest I find myself re-thinking this one lately as the days go by and my progeny approach reality in a IRL sense.

One thing that I do believe is that people are hella crazy and that ultimately the only partner that ever works for a person long term is one whose version of crazy offsets your own. As a married man I still think this holds true. My wife, at times, can be the most indecisive person in the world and similarly, at times, I like to be the one making the decisions. She's the type that will take 10 minutes to pick out toothpaste from the aisle whereas I'm already at the checkout as I've preplanned every step I took before I arrived at the store. Similarly I am bad with common sense things whereas she is very down-to-earth and logical.

I don't know that I believe that marriage is required for people to be happy and I don't know that I believe that everyone needs to have kids. For me both are/were very important to me but I'm willing to accept that my view of the world is not everyone's. Heck, 10 years ago I would have totally disagreed with everything written here today so who am I to say that 10 years from now I won't similarly re-read this with disgust. :)

Wedding day blues

So I have to confess that our wedding was one of the most intense experiences in my life, although not in the ways that I would have expected. There were many times during the day that I thought to myself “thank god I have experience running events through Toastmasters” as I was able to use my skills throughout.

As an aside, one of the great lessons that I took away from it all is an oldie but a gooder. You can judge the success of yourself as an individual by the work that people do on your behalf, particularly when unattended and when they need to use their own judgment. There were many details arranged quietly by my Mom and Ernie that I wasn’t consciously privy to but found out and agreed with afterwards. Similarly my groomsmen were exceptional. After the ceremony, I was immediately swamped with guests who wanted to pass on their well wishes personally. No worries. My groomsmen all disappeared and to be honest I didn’t really have an idea where they all ended up but I knew that they were doing good work. By the time I had made it through all the people (a couple hours, roughly) I found out that my groomsmen had assembled around the food tables and made sure that people were all fed. At one point there was literally three guys and three barbeques with burgers/hot dogs flying off the grills.

There were many similarly positive experiences before and after the wedding – Kev and I had to get a bouquet of flowers unexpectedly the morning of the wedding, Jon ripped it apart and rebuilt a proper bundle, Mike ended up shadowing the photographer and got a number of amazing shots.

One of my less favorite ex’s once said that you can judge yourself by the quality of the people around you, and frankly if true then I feel like I’m doing well.

Why we build in a buffer

So far today I've already had a whack more people RSVP for the wedding. In short, this is why we build in a buffer whenever we estimate anything. For my wedding I ran with a 20% overage after I had thoroughly polled all my friends and family. At the time when I was defending the number it seemed ridiculous but based on today alone is probably not outside the realm of possibility.

Of course all of this said a buffer doesn't do you much good if you're rained out and thus no one shows up. Fortunately most food can be frozen. :)

Abandoned rings

So yesterday was the day that I officially gave up on my wedding ring.

To make a long story short, I'm kind of a gimp with respect to metals. Back when I was a teen I started reacting to things. Eyeglasses that wore down to the metal caused a reaction. Rings and cheap jewelery started making my skin peel and blister. To be honest it wasn't a big deal because I don't usually wear ornamentation beyond my silver cross.

2-3 years back I started developing an awful blister across my chest between my belly button and my waist line. As stupid as it seems in retrospect I had it in the back of my head that it could be some kind of contagious STD. The doctor just about literally laughed me out of the office as he pointed out that it was the exact shape as my belt buckle.

I was able to buy another year on wearing belts by painting my belt buckles with clear nail polish but eventually that stops working. My sensitivity gets worse and worse as the years go on. I sincerely expect that I am eventually going to have to give up zippers and button flies unless they are made from surgical steel or silver.

Anyways, my wedding ring was a tungsten carbide ring. When I first started reacting to it a week or so in I figured it was probably a coating on the ring - gave it a scrub and switched fingers and it was OK. I made it another 3-4 weeks before I really started reacting to it. I tried at end of last week to switch fingers to see how quickly I react - within 24 hours I literally have a 5-7 mm hole through my flesh. I tried to hang it around my neck with my silver cross as a last ditch effort to see if I could buy myself time until the wedding but overnight my upper chest turned bright red and peeling in a semicircle defined by the locus point of the ring. Keep in mind that tungsten carbide is extremely hypoallergenic. Most of the jewelery stores in town are gobsmacked that I can react to it at all - it's unheard of.

Anyways, so the ring sits at home unattended and I suppose after the wedding I'll have to figure out a replacement. Stupid metal sensitive body :p

Thud thud thud thud

So yesterday was the first day we could hear the baby's heart with a fetal heart monitor. Very cool. Check out the video below if you're into that sort of thing.

The first gifts

So in the last 48 hours we have got our first baby clothing, our first baby gift, our first high chair, first stroller, first wedding gift. We picked up many samples of blue paint so we can pick the right color for the nursery. Blue skies and clouds will be the motif. I'm still trying to talk Carol into glow-in-the-dark stars on the roof. I figure that in the next week I'll size the nursery closet and get some shelving from work to make that a linen/storage closet.

It's all coming together at a maddening pace. I'm trying to pretend the wedding isn't coming on like a freight train. By end of week we'll have the final guest counts into the rental places, final count into the cake people... Last week of Toastmasters for a while this week. Oi.