In a mere 30 minutes, Holden would have been born exactly 1 year ago. Part of me feels that its amazing its been a year already, the other part of me feels that the year has been an eternity, but in a good sense, meaning, I don’t recall what life was like before this adventure began. For those of you who know Mike and I, we describe life as before or after Mike and Cherokee. Since we’ve been together now almost 12 years (gasp!) and married for 5, we have been through almost everything together. Now we refer to most things as pre and post Holden.

We could have never imagined what this coming year was going to be like. There are definitely things that we’ve had to give up: late night runs to the diner, going to movies, etc., but we’ve definitely worked hard to try and keep ourselves sane, this includes Holden. I can’t say however, that I really miss all the times before, because what we have now is definitely more meaningful. Life definitely has a different focus and this past year is an exaination in just how precious life is. In the beginning we would watch him sleep and make sure that he as ok every half hour. I still sneak into his room and just check him out, tuck him in, before I go to bed. I love getting to see him first thing in the morning, standing at his crib, with a big smile on his face, waiting to start the day. While its hard to leave him, its great to have Mike and his mom watch him, so that I know someone is watching him smile and laugh, and that they would enjoy those same smiles as I would.

He has definitely gone through a lot of physical changes through the year. In the beginning, he was just a little baby, not moving much, with basic needs of warmth, food, diaper changes and sleeping. Now he is a boundless ball of energy, crawling/almost walking around trying to find something of yours to play with. He can now feed himself, with much mess, but at least he can still sustain himself. He definitely has developed his own personality, being very happy and always smiling, yet at other times, being very shy and scared in new situations. He has an idea of what he wants and doesn’t want. In essence, he’s becoming more of a person, which is an amazing process to observe.

I definitely could not have done the past year alone. Mike has been amazing as a dad, juggling Holden as well as work responsibilities. It’s amazing seeing him in this role, as that when I first met him, he told me ne never wanted to get married, let alone have kids. Now he’s a great dad.

There are also lots of other people out there who’ve really helped us through the year. My parents for helping us finish the basement so we could fix up Holden’s room. Mike’s family for their support and for Mike’s mom (not to mention co-workers) who help watch Holden two days a week. Our friends for keeping us sane and normal adults (sorry for all the baby talk).

I’ve rambled on long enough…now its only 10 minutes to the time he was born. Here’s to looking forward to tomorrow and the next birthday. Happy 1st Birthday, Holden!

3 Comments || Topcs: General

Usually I hate snow days. They don’t build them into our schedule so it means I lose a day of summer. Inevitably, I end up doing work during snow days so really they squeeze another day of work out of me. Lately, I have been super disenchanted with work so Thursday, Friday, Monday off have totally been worth it. My summer is 3 days shorter now, but I don’t mind as much. I can even go for four.

The funniest part is that every one of these snow days turned out to be a false alarm. I am presently underwhelmed with how bad the roads seem to be from my window.

I have a cold so it could be better, but my main task for the day has been watching dawn of the dead (original). Mission accomplished.

Jen just got home and she looks like a wet puppy.

1 Comment || Topcs: General

So this weekend is what I plan to refer to as , freedom holiday, from this point forward. I have dubed the days before holdens birthday mine and cherokee’s official fredom holiday where we celebrate our lack there of due to child. So this weekend we traveled up to nyc to see the gates in central park. I had seen alot of picture of the gates around the web, and decided last weekend that we should try and see them before they come down. Generally I love instalation art, and I also love stupidly large things. One of my favorite pieces of art in baltimore right now is the man/woman scuplture that every one in baltimore loves to hate, in front of the train station. I love it, well because its huge, and unsympathetic for being huge. The gates are elegant, down right stately, but at the same time outrageous in scale. When you walk through the park they are every where, and fit right in, but stick out at the same time. They flow around the park like planted tree’s , but at the same time stand in the way of natural flow. I dug them alot.

We then took the boy to fao to pick out his bday present. The thing about such holidays w/ him right now is he doesnt even really realize their happening, so this worked out well. No hidding a gift from him, and this way we can quickly find out what he likes and doesnt like. I find it really sad, that all the foa’s around the country have been closing. The fao in nyc is like a kids paradise, and how a toy store should be, not combined w/ groceries and cheap house hold goods, but a store for kids.

was a nice retreat all be it, for less then 24 hours. we hung w/ cherokee’s cousin who lives in manhatten and was nice enough to let us steal her bed saw the art… got some toys… ate good indian… and quickly (3:30 minutes to be exact) headed home.

Today we had a family bday party for holden. His official bday is tomorrow, thus advance warning of very emo post tomorrow, but tomorrow is a monday so the fam and friends got together today…. we decided to do it up right w/ a pizza party… mostly because the pizza place down the street is nice and easy. Plus our house being 12 feet wide is not condusive to large crowds, when you dont have the luxury of hanging outside. All worked out pretty well, and holden made out w/ a booty of toys. Although he was in a definite state of shock / fussyness… Partly due to the crowd I think and partly due to … well being one and being expected to sit around for so long.

One of the funny side effects of the party was seeing how friends interact w/ your family. I mean I know jim and jen have both spent plenty of time w/ both our families, but some other friends were interacting for the first time w/ the folks who raised us. Its always kind of awkward, you feel embaressed for all parties, but also keenly intetrested in the odd conversations that will undoubtedly ensue.

anyways in short, freedom holdiay # 1, successfull… and fun… emo post tomorrow to follow, for now enjoy photographic documentaion

2 Comments || Topcs: General, parenting

yesterday was my friend jed’s birthday. we were supposed to go to the gunks for the weekend but the weather and my knee got in the way of that. Plan B was to go duckpin bowling. To describe jed, one was to point out that he is quiet, went to a christian college, teaches special ed kids, and when he falls from a boulder problem usually yells something wildly obscene like “ayayay!” or “fiddlesticks”. Yesterday morning I received this e-mail:

some of you already know this but today i turned the big three O. to celebrate this remarkable
accomplishment we are going duckpin bowling at taylor’s stoneleigh bowling center. Time is 10-12. cost is 14 bones which includes bowling, shoes, and all you can eat pizza. hopefully i will see all of you there if not you can go fuck yourself.

the even better part is that when the lane was reserved at this family establishment that may or may not be BYOB, the following statement was made:

well, we’re all mature adults. There will only be about ten of us and we’ll probably only have about one beer each

At last count there were nearly 30 people spread over 4 lanes with about 12 beers in the coolers for every person. 2 balls going down the lane at once, 3 in rapid succession, kicking balls down the lane soccer style, and a few more choice maneuvers came into play. Afterwards we rolled to some college bar in towson where the manager had to ask people to refrain from the beginnings of the pull up contest on the doorway because the building was over 150 years old.

At this time, I would like to point out that I was involved in none of this horseplay but that a great time was had by all.

Today is holden’s birthday party, where I plan to be far less better behaved than last night.

No Comments || Topcs: General

Allot of times my life is all about juggeling. Which is kind of ironic, seeing ive tried to learn to juggle physical objects and fail every time (i let jim do that for me). Some days I juggle better then others. Today I felt like I was continually droping the flying knives to my dismay. Nothing crucial happened, nobody died, no one got hurt, I just felt the stress very heavy on my shoulders and it effected me a little. Holden was pretty needy today, and so was work. Neither got what they needed, and instead I freaked out on both. Ive never really raised my voice at all w/ anything about holden until today. I didnt really scream, but I was visually upset and frustrated, and he started to cry. I came pretty close myself. Instead I huged him and gave him the “one day you’ll know how hard this all is” talk.

2 Comments || Topcs: General, parenting

so today at work, we had a pretty hard failure, our main server which hosts our mail and web site went down… and hard… I spent much of the day playing clean up and fix up… so I get home and to make myself not hate technology completly, I decide to get on w/ it and deploy the new version of geekpunk.org … so here you go…

new look and feel
(new graphics and fun loving xhtml.. best viewed w/ a real browser…)

new version of wordpress
(1.5 took a while to get a hang of the changes especially the deal w/ themes etc.. but like it allot now)

new site organization
(on the back end, lots of new mod_rewrite stuff… no will notice this really… but hey i do)

so enjoy, while i spend the next couple days cleaning up, and let me know if i miss something

7 Comments || Topcs: geek

Um, I seem to recall two people saying that they would apply when the next round of Amazing Race applications became available?

The fine print says that they’re asking for FOUR person teams.

4 Comments || Topcs: General

I have a newer phone. It allows for mp3’s as ringtones. In my new school building I get cellphone reception (I never did at my other school). I sometimes forget to turn my phone off. Today during class (a class in which I have confiscated a number of cell phones), my phone starts ringing. THe best part is that my ringtone is a song by ANDREW WK.

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I tend to take for grannet just how fragile life is , and how lucky I am to have the things in place to keep mind on track. You know when ever I heared about people dieing of diarrhea, I was always kind of supprised, I mean I understood the concept, but guess in my first world mindset/life I have never experianced a case of diarrhea that would seem life threatening. On weds/thurs I got hella sick… Now I think I get the concept, not to say my life was threatened, but to say that I lost enough fluids in a 24 hour span, that I could imagine it happening.

Essentially over night I had lost 4 pounds of fluids… When i woke up, I felt like I was dieing, when ever I stood up I felt faint. Half way through the day I put the call into cherokee saying I didnt think I could do the stay at home dad duties, litterally in the middle of the call cherokee walked in the door w/ sick supplies (she has amaizing timming some times). Luckily she was able to take a personal day, and take care of holden while I spent the day in bed/bathroom drinking fluids and eating crackers. My mom is watching him today, and now that im feeling more human Ill probably go pick him up in the next couple hours.

while laying in bed sick, I realized 1) just how lucky I am to have the kinds of supports / situations in my life to live it the way I do and 2) that daily life is a very fragile thing… I take for grannet yet hate routine, but when something happens to so drasricly and uncontrolably change that routine you realize how fragile that frabric is… I know im probably over thinking this all… but hey, thats what i do.

8 Comments || Topcs: General

so i have a more substantial real post to post later tonight… but in the mean time…

i posted up a demo for a band I was in , in 1996 w/ chris strunk/dan goldberg/jason angst / tadd / and ian in a cow suit.. called moloch… i think we might have existed for 4 months, and played a bunch of shows…

anywho…

enjoy the mid 90’s grind wonder of moloch

No Comments || Topcs: General