This is a test--Simon's water

I am testing a new add-on that would allow me to update more easily. 

Simon regularly wakes up in the middle of the night demanding a drink of water.  One night, however, I heard the pitter-patter of little feet and went to investigate.  He had gotten up, walked into the bathroom, climbed up in the toilet from which he can reach the sink, and pulled out his pacifier and set it on the toilet tank.  He didn't notice me standing in the door watching as he filled the cup with water, took a drink, dumped the rest of the water in the sink, put the bink back in his mouth and climbed down from the toilet.  He noticed me with a start as he walked back to his bed.  But he has never done that since, which I frankly would prefer.

"it's like those bloggers who post conversations rather than actually creating content"

Scott: http://www.koco.com/news/15112533/detail.html

Jason: ouch. and it is so unnecessary. They could have adequately steadied the camera without breaking the (attempted) illusion. Drives me nuts when film makers think they are better conveying reality by putting as little between the camera and the subject as possible. I would think that Film 101 is "the camera, by its very nature, distorts reality." Makeup is a good analogy. Typically actor's wear make up to look natural on film because the camera makes an unmade-up person look zombie-like. Cinema Vérité is cowardice on the part of a film maker who is unwilling to make decisions about what he or she considers "true" and do the hard work of evoking it on film.

Jason: clearly, something I feel strongly about. I should add $0.50 to that opinion and get myself some coffee.

Scott: You should blog that.

Jason Gilbert: Hey! good idea. It would tick my family off though: "he doesn't blog for a month about the topic we are interested in, then a rant about cinematic style?"

Scott: Well, maybe it would lead to more...

Jason: We shall see. I'll post this entire conversation.

comment

Several of you have commented in this blog but I had the moderation settings of incorrectly set, causing your comments to sit in purgatory until a benevolent intercessor brought them to my attention. I have freed them and fixed the moderation so all comments will go through without problems until someone says something sufficiently boneheaded to make me close the entire comments module in a fit of seizure-inducing eye-rolling.

later, unmoderated fans

promises promises

What the heck happened to me and my promise to post every day in November? Did the kids just stop doing anything worth writing about? Well, no. I have picked up an important new project that is taking up a lot of my time. It's called being "responsible for my life." Step one is cleaning up all of the various promises and projects that I have been neglecting for the past few years. It is quite a pile, let me tell you. I expect to get "caught up" by the end of the year. The only way to do this and not get behind on current and new commitments is to really dedicate all of my time to working hard--"all" of my time being about 30 minutes a day that I am not working, sleeping, and not tending to hyperactive littlings. Thing is, I'm still new at this whole really-working-hard-to-do-everything-I-said-I-would-do. A pro would have found the 30 minutes a day that I need to blog, but I am not a pro--nowhere near it. I am not even on one of the AAA pro farm teams. I'm just playing ball in the alley at this point. But I am playing pretty good alley ball. By next November, I'll be good enough live up to this task and still get to bed on time. Promise.

nanoblomo

Val has convinced Ed to particpate with her in National Novel Writing Month. My question: "Who will raise their children?"

I calculated the amount of time that I would need to dedicate each day to produce the required number of words and subtracted the amount of time each day I have if I want to maintain my marriage. The answer is a negative integer. So until I have developed my space-time warping skills, NaNoWriMo is not for me (we could go into why I am not dedicating what little time I do have to writing novel I've begun, the other one I've outlined, and the two others I'm mentally gestating, but you are not my therapist).

Fussy to the rescue (via Laid Off Dad). She is challenging those of us in blogland to make November National Blog Writing Month. So I have taken up the challenge to post to this blog every day in November, wether I have something post-worthy or not--photos don't count. I want to be a writer not a photographer (not entirely true, ask my therapist). You may ask, "if you have the energy and content to post every day for a month, then why do you only post fortnightly? Again, not my therapist.

Later fans of foster parents of NaNoWriMo orphans.


Urchins of the literati

i'm a pro, so you can print

You can now purchase prints of photos that you see on this blog.

Most of the photos that will be posted from today forward (including the two below) will be loaded in a file size that allows you to buy prints from Flickr's photo-finishing service or download large-sized images that you can print elsewhere. I will attempt to go backwards and upload new, larger versions of older photos as I have time (ha!).

How?

First, you have to get your own Flickr account. Regrettably, this means that you also have to get a yahoo account (sbcglobal is a Yahoo account).

How do you know if the photo is suitable for printing? Click on it. Above the photo is a series of little icons. One shows a magnifying glass and says "ALL SIZES." Click on it, then pick the original size. If it is HUGE, like, larger than your screen, then is a suitable resolution for printing.

Go back and click "order prints." Or your can just download the big size image and print it wherever you want.

Call with questions.

enjoy, photo-emulsion fans

influencial

This very blog is #18 out of 147 returns in a Google search for "amloidosis."

It is also #20 out of 145,000 returns for "worms in raisins."

perhaps on the mtv blog

--I've gone acoustic [giggle].
--huh?
--I'm unplugged.
--oh. Ha! That's pretty good
--You should blog it.

this fussy week post is brought to you in part by . . .

I see when I visit the site (yes, I visit my own blog) that there is
advertising at the top that relates directly to what I have posted.
Blogger, now owned by Google, has little programs, much like those in hit
film "The Matrix," that read my posts and then search for advertising
related to keywords in the content. So I am comforted to know that even if you are not reading this, Google is, and they could buy and sell you at this point. So I will try to post entries that are more conducive to advertising links so that we can keep this endeavor free of charge.

David, who only wears onesies by Gerber or Carter, has been particularly
fussy this week. He seems to be having sinus problems. He refuses to sleep on his back and when we lay him on his back to change his Pampers brand diapers, he fusses and his breathing is noticeably louder. We have been treating him with Little Noses saline solution and trying to suck out the snot with a Little Noses snot sucker bulb but with little success.
Additionally, he seems to be having tummy problems again, which makes him
cry for hours at a time and spit up his milk and Similac Brand Formula with Alumentum. Jaime suspects that the drainage from his nose is getting into his tummy, which is what happens when she gets a cold. And he will not sleep. In spite of all of our tricks and soothing and coaxing and cooing and dancing, he simply stays awake until his is so tired and cranky, that he just exhausts himself and can't hold his eyes open.

But when he is not fussy, he makes up for it by being more charming than
ever. He is smiling lots more, for instance. He is supposed to be
developing his social smile about now. He is so gassy that it is difficult to tell the difference between his frequent gassy smiles and anything else--when in doubt, we call it a social smile. He certainly focuses on things more--especially his mom. Several times I have seen him look straight at her and smile. His arm movements are much more coordinated. He can now successfully get his hand to his mouth seven times out of ten, which means he smacks himself in the eye much less frequently. We could hook some sort of generator to his legs and power the apartment with his constant, violent kicking. I was awakened yesterday by what felt like the U.S. Olympic synchronized swim team practicing treading on my back. I turned over to tell them that they aren't really athletes to discover that it was just David letting me know that he is hungry.

So he is fussy and charming. This is to keep us from refusing to eventually let him go while also preventing us giving him to the next person we see out the window.

so you want a thousand words

I know that you keep coming back for the wit, but there are some who are really just in it for the photos. I have decided to make things a little easier. Over in the sidebar, you will see a strip of thumbnails that link to full size images at my new photoblog at Buzznet. That strip will automatically update with the most recently posted photographs as I post them.

The advantage for you is no more boxes with a little red X. Additionally, you don't have to come to the blog at all. Just bookmark the Buzznet site and return to it regularly.

The advantage for me is that Buzznet is easier to post to and I don't have to manually link to the images

The disadvantages are that Buzznet resizes the images so they will not be suitable for making decent prints. If you must have a print, email me and I will post the image to Ofoto. Also, I can't actually put the photos in the blog posts but that is ok.

Someday, when I have money coming out of my ears and time to burn, I will have my own Website that will be beautiful and integrate the words and images together. But for now, I have to confine myself to the freebies.

happy viewing

a few new images

See a few new photos here.

Does size matter? Well yes and no. I promised that I would make the images that I am posting a little larger. The first two images in this folder were taken by some friends that visited so I can't do anything about the size of those. The rest should provide nice 4 x 6 images. The issue is this: Ofoto and Photoshop disagree about how many pixels constitute a 4 x 6 image. Photoshop has sized everything that I post at 4 x 6, but according to Ofoto, the number of pixels is not sufficient. Fascinating, right?

Teaser: some exciting new blog developments are in the works. . . stay tuned.

Welcome

If you are reading this, then you are probably a friend or a relative just brimming with excitement and craving news about our soon-to-be-born bundle of joy. Mark this in your "favorites" and return often. I promise to try and update this at least once a week. Additionally, I will try to keep up-to-date photos here that are linked to Ofoto, Flickr a great service that will allow to buy prints of any of the photos that I post.

Eventually, I will have our email addresses posted as well as links as time allows.

Enjoy.