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Hilary and I had our first ultrasound on Friday. By bouncing high-frequency sound around in my wife's tummy, we were actually able to look at our baby. Little hands, legs, arms, body. We get to call her "her" instead of "it." Having a pregnant wife, a baby daughter, knowing that you are going to be the parent of a future toddler, teenager, wife, mother, grandmother is one of the most surreal and wonderful experiences possible. A pregnant wife is beautiful.
We're getting settled in but we're still a long ways from feeling like life here is "normal." Summer is technically over and fall is supposedly on its way, but that season doesn't have the same meaning down here. Instead of being blisteringly hot and humid the second the sun peaks above the horizon, you can stroll rather than dash between havens of air-conditioned safety. In fact, I mowed the lawn yesterday afternoon. It was a very interesting experience.
First, it's been probably 3 weeks since it was last mowed, so the grass was a little high. Why did I wait 3 weeks? Well, I was trying to find a good deal on craigslist. I used to think good deals were the norm on craigslist, because it's where everybody is dumping their garbage. I think it may used to have been like that, but now it's populated with adds like "BRAND NEW COUCH FOR 400 DOLLARS!! WE BOUGHT IT ONLY ONE YEAR AGO, EXCELLENT CONDITION!!! MUST SEE!!!" and "52 inch TV! I paid over 1600 dollars for this baby 5 years ago and now I'm practically giving it away. 800 firm." I finally gave up and bought a new lawn mower from Walmart yesterday. The landlord priced out lawnservices for me but I couldn't stomach the bill. I'm paying off my own lawnmower in about a month in a half by doing it myself so I don't feel bad about giving up the hunt for a used one.
The grass in florida isn't the same as the grass in the northwest. Floridian grass blades are thick, rubbery, juicy, paler, and the home of myriads of biting and bloodsucking things (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I found a pinhead sized tick crawling up my leg on one back yard excursion, and have gotten several chigger bites already). Afer mowing, for the heck of it I grabbed a handful of the clippings and squeezed. About as much water came out of it as a wet rag. Still, I enjoy having my own yard here, enjoy seeing all the strange critters that live about our place. Every week I check up on the toad that lives by our airconditioner, we have a large 5-lined skink camping out in our garage, we named the green anole that lives next to our front door "Joaquin" (I was inspired by a walking stick crawling up the wall), and the other day I spotted another megalo-millapede and a bunch of very strange looking praying-mantises crawling around our back patio at night.
Oh yeah, and one of the coolest critters of all are the ghost crabs. I found out about these little fellers from Jon, and managed to actually catch a few. They're translucent crabs that only come out at night. They perch about 10 feet from the water, picking through the sand with their claws looking for something to eat. when you shine the flashlight on them or get to close they suddenly whiz towards the water, and they are fast. 10mph top speed according to Wikipedia, that's pretty fast for a crab smaller than a biscuit. Anyway, if anyone comes to visit us maybe we can go hunting for ghost crabs.
Some nearby hair-cutting place just opened and was doing a promotional - $3.00 for a job. I needed a haircut so I got one, and all I can say is that you get what you pay for. After about a week Hilary couldn't take it anymore, so we bought some haircutting scissors and a comb for a combined price of about $6.00. She gave me one of the best haircuts I've ever had, so I don't think I'm ever going to get my haircut anywhere else from now on.
Work is really enjoyable. My boss is great, and I love what I'm doing. Granted, the government can be a little slow, and the bureaucracy is... um... astounding. But if you take care of all the extras you can still get a lot done. In the last couple weeks I've actually been very productive. It helps that I'm running two 64 bit machines, one of which has 4 chips, each with 2 cores and 16 GB of ram (the other only has 8, so I use it for my less intensive operations). Actually, to be frank I'm somewhat surprised that the performance increase isn't better than I thought it would be. It's good but it's not 10 times better, maybe like... 2 or 3 times better. Still though, I like what I'm working with, and things are going well on that front.
John Lang put the Lord of the Rings on Hilary's Ipod. We are halfway through the Two Towers now, and our gas-bill is suffering because we are constantly trying to find excuses to drive somewhere and snag a few more minutes of LOTR. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the movies, the books are far better and I can understand why some people were miffed. Peter Jackson completely failed to capture the nobility of several key characters. Theoden possibly got nerfed the hardest, but Gimli, Aragon and, well, hmm... actually pretty much everyone got portrayed poorly now that I think about it. I'm only halfway through the series, and I could spend an entire post on this. Maybe I will after I finish the books.
Anyway, that's a bit of our life right now. Hopefully I'll have more pictures up in the not too distant future.
We're getting settled in but we're still a long ways from feeling like life here is "normal." Summer is technically over and fall is supposedly on its way, but that season doesn't have the same meaning down here. Instead of being blisteringly hot and humid the second the sun peaks above the horizon, you can stroll rather than dash between havens of air-conditioned safety. In fact, I mowed the lawn yesterday afternoon. It was a very interesting experience.
First, it's been probably 3 weeks since it was last mowed, so the grass was a little high. Why did I wait 3 weeks? Well, I was trying to find a good deal on craigslist. I used to think good deals were the norm on craigslist, because it's where everybody is dumping their garbage. I think it may used to have been like that, but now it's populated with adds like "BRAND NEW COUCH FOR 400 DOLLARS!! WE BOUGHT IT ONLY ONE YEAR AGO, EXCELLENT CONDITION!!! MUST SEE!!!" and "52 inch TV! I paid over 1600 dollars for this baby 5 years ago and now I'm practically giving it away. 800 firm." I finally gave up and bought a new lawn mower from Walmart yesterday. The landlord priced out lawnservices for me but I couldn't stomach the bill. I'm paying off my own lawnmower in about a month in a half by doing it myself so I don't feel bad about giving up the hunt for a used one.
The grass in florida isn't the same as the grass in the northwest. Floridian grass blades are thick, rubbery, juicy, paler, and the home of myriads of biting and bloodsucking things (that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I found a pinhead sized tick crawling up my leg on one back yard excursion, and have gotten several chigger bites already). Afer mowing, for the heck of it I grabbed a handful of the clippings and squeezed. About as much water came out of it as a wet rag. Still, I enjoy having my own yard here, enjoy seeing all the strange critters that live about our place. Every week I check up on the toad that lives by our airconditioner, we have a large 5-lined skink camping out in our garage, we named the green anole that lives next to our front door "Joaquin" (I was inspired by a walking stick crawling up the wall), and the other day I spotted another megalo-millapede and a bunch of very strange looking praying-mantises crawling around our back patio at night.
Oh yeah, and one of the coolest critters of all are the ghost crabs. I found out about these little fellers from Jon, and managed to actually catch a few. They're translucent crabs that only come out at night. They perch about 10 feet from the water, picking through the sand with their claws looking for something to eat. when you shine the flashlight on them or get to close they suddenly whiz towards the water, and they are fast. 10mph top speed according to Wikipedia, that's pretty fast for a crab smaller than a biscuit. Anyway, if anyone comes to visit us maybe we can go hunting for ghost crabs.
Some nearby hair-cutting place just opened and was doing a promotional - $3.00 for a job. I needed a haircut so I got one, and all I can say is that you get what you pay for. After about a week Hilary couldn't take it anymore, so we bought some haircutting scissors and a comb for a combined price of about $6.00. She gave me one of the best haircuts I've ever had, so I don't think I'm ever going to get my haircut anywhere else from now on.
Work is really enjoyable. My boss is great, and I love what I'm doing. Granted, the government can be a little slow, and the bureaucracy is... um... astounding. But if you take care of all the extras you can still get a lot done. In the last couple weeks I've actually been very productive. It helps that I'm running two 64 bit machines, one of which has 4 chips, each with 2 cores and 16 GB of ram (the other only has 8, so I use it for my less intensive operations). Actually, to be frank I'm somewhat surprised that the performance increase isn't better than I thought it would be. It's good but it's not 10 times better, maybe like... 2 or 3 times better. Still though, I like what I'm working with, and things are going well on that front.
John Lang put the Lord of the Rings on Hilary's Ipod. We are halfway through the Two Towers now, and our gas-bill is suffering because we are constantly trying to find excuses to drive somewhere and snag a few more minutes of LOTR. Though I thoroughly enjoyed the movies, the books are far better and I can understand why some people were miffed. Peter Jackson completely failed to capture the nobility of several key characters. Theoden possibly got nerfed the hardest, but Gimli, Aragon and, well, hmm... actually pretty much everyone got portrayed poorly now that I think about it. I'm only halfway through the series, and I could spend an entire post on this. Maybe I will after I finish the books.
Anyway, that's a bit of our life right now. Hopefully I'll have more pictures up in the not too distant future.
posted by tmm at
12:09 PM
2 Comments:
Congrats on the news! It'll be interesting to swap stories about the differences between a baby boy and a baby girl.
Ah ha! I totally understand what you mean about the local craigslist, which I look at all the time (you forgot to mention that it exists outside the rules of spelling and grammar). Can't wait to see you on Saturday and check the new place out.
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