Sadly, 10:30 is too late for any serious blogging tonight, but tomorrow, I promise to give you my T.O.R.T review.

Today was quite a day. We got up early for Nathaniel's doctors appointment, and expected it to be a quick lab visit and be done, but it turned into a much longer deal because they had a lot of trouble finding his veins. Luckily I got to sit out in the waiting room while he was poked five times to no avail, by three people, two of whom specialize in working with small babies. After spending an hour and a half at the clinic, we had to go to the hospital to get blood drawn for the the tests. We took a pit stop at my in-laws in order to let the little guy take a bit of a nap since he was overdue for one, and to feed him a bottle to keep him hydrated. At the hospital, things went pretty well and they managed to get the blood drawn relatively quickly.
Nathaniel was a trooper; he did very very well and in the end at the hospital he barely cried out when he was stuck. He did a lot better than I would have, to be sure. The problem, though was that it totally threw off his schedule. He was overdue for at least one, probably two naps when we got home, and he didn't really feel like sleeping. I managed to get him to take a couple of short naps, but when he made it clear he wasn't interested in sleeping much more, I decided it was time to go and visit his grandpa.
I'd been meaning to take a walk over to my folks' house for a couple of days since it has been so warm here, (40 degrees!) but things just hadn't worked out. Today, I got out the baby carrier and strapped him to my front, my backpack to my back and the diaper bag over a shoulder. I'm sure I looked quite the sight to the roofing contractors on the corner at the end of our alley. The picture above is obviously before the backpack or diaper bag were added.
We had a nice visit with my folks and then headed home where he finally took a little bit more of a nap before having a bath, green beans and playing until it was time for us to eat our own dinner. Put him to bed and he was showing how tired he was, finally snoozing for a long while until we woke him up for a dinner. He was still mostly asleep when Stephanie fed him a bottle, but hopefully it will let him sleep a little longer before waking up hungry.

I went to check out phones this evening too, and was frustrated with the prices of the options at the T-Mobile store (and even more so the fact that you can't actually look at a Nexus One anywhere--does Google really expect people to buy the thing sight unseen? I guess so since people are doing just that. . . .) I might try to track down someone with a Nexus One to compare with the MyTouch and the Samsung phone. I wasn't too impressed with the Cliq--too focused on social networking, which is nice but not the be all and end all of what I want from my phone. I'm going to have a call with some Oppenheimer folks tomorrow and I'll try to remember to ask them what the firm has to say about the subject, to the extent that they care at all. I'm guessing it won't make a lick of difference, but it will be nice to know if it would.

T.O.R.T. tomorrow night; Stephanie isn't going to come along, she and Ivy are going to hang out for a bit instead. She was looking forward to a date--even a bad law-school joke fest of one--and now she's not going with me. I'm going to plan something for another day to get out and away for a few hours, but the mess of a schedule at the moment means that the only real chance we have is Sunday, or to wait until around the 16th or so. Hopefully something will work out.

I've got a pimple in my nose and it stings.

Not much to write about. Or I'm just tired. Went to the Sweetwater to see the US game against the Netherlands. Not a dreadful match but not a great one either. We looked bad for long stretches but mostly just a pedestrian game. Perhaps because I knew who had won the game due to seeing the FSC ticker when I walked in. Oh well.
Nathaniel goes to the doctor tomorrow morning for more tests. they have to take a urine sample so they're going to catheterize him. I'm not sure I will be able to watch since I have enough trouble with blood draws (which they're also going to have to do.) I guess there is sone kidney value that came back odd so they're a little concerned. Hopefully it is just reflux and nothing much to worry about, but that won't keep Stephanie and me from worrying non stop for at least a week or two.
Anyhow, after a beer too many and crummy Sweetwater food, I need to go to sleep. Having said that I didn't have much to say, I've sure tapped out a lot on this shitty iPod keyboard.

It's a funny thing. I don't have time to get anything done during the day most of the time because I'm watching Nathaniel (I'm not complaining, I enjoy watching him quite a bit, I just can't get anything done,) and yet now when I get him down for a nap, I'm at a loss for what to do for the next hour or so while he sleeps. Sure there are plenty of things that need doing -- empty the dishwasher, clean off the table, put in more child-proofing things, etc. -- but none of it appeals to me in the least at the moment; I'm just tired. I don't want to do much of anything else either, like TV or reading or anything. Not even mindlessly surfing the web (in an infinite Facebook-->Twitter-->LifeHacker-->Facebook-->Twitter-->Lifehacker loop.)
Best get started, I guess. I'll start on the dishwasher and see if that spurs me to do more.

I got a call from our old friend Donovan tonight, who was having tremendous difficulty with his computer. It seems that out of the blue, a "Windows Antivirus XP 2010" pop up window appeared, and asked him for his credit card information to subscribe for protection. I think the term "protection" was intended in this case like the old mob "protection racket." Of course, being the astute and adroit person that he is, our friend dutifully entered his credit card info and hit submit. The program promptly killed his internet connection and "took over" his machine. So what did he do? Called me. I walked him through a few things and told him to call the credit card company, which he ended up doing, and then calling me back to tell me that he had indeed been billed $60 and that the credit card company had flagged his account because of it. I left him running a virus scan in safemode, but I'm sure I'll have to run an ad-aware or malwarebytes scan tomorrow--remotely, somehow as well.



I half expect the man to be caught up in one of those Nigerian email scams one of these days. Who just sends out their credit card info because some random popup asked for it? At least he had the insight to call me right away. Hopefully there won't be too much damage and I can figure it out remotely. I don't know how to make a trip out to Newport to help him in person (which might well be faster, even accounting for travel time.)

Wienery Goodness

I went to school today to get a few things done for the clinic. Those didn't take too long, and it was nice to get some work done and feel like I'd accomplished something. I also got to talk to Amber and hang out with Calder for lunch. We also ran into Matt and made fun of him for a good 15 minutes--it was like 1L year all over again.

Lunch, though, was the highlight. We went to the Wienery, and I had a Selamu burger--garlic and peppers in the meat, and a plate of chili-cheese fries, which surprised me by being served with cole slaw on top of them. Although I would never have thought of such a combination on my own, it was actually quite tasty.














I think I'm going to have to start carrying either a small pad of paper, or get a data phone earlier than I currently plan, because I keep coming up with good ideas for something to talk about on here, but forgetting when it comes time to write (at 8 or 9 at night.)


I've been enjoying listening to Plato and a Platypus today, it's quite a good intro to philosophy, and the jokes are often rather funny. It's a nice overview of each subject which makes the concepts (at least the basics) digestible and understandable. It's kind of what I tried to do with soccer on my old blog.

Today Nathaniel got to see two big trucks. He likes to stand on the couch and look out the window at whatever is going on, but he especially enjoys seeing cars go by and watches them all the way up and down the block. This morning he got to see the recycling truck as it picked up ours and our neighbor's recycling from the curb and then later on he got to watch a dumptruck go down the street as some city workers filled in some potholes. For some reason there was a camera man and an audio guy following the road workers, which I thought was odd, but I figured that they were probably doing a local TV news story on the road conditions, which are bordering on unbelievably bad.

It was another good day for Nathaniel's naps; he took a long nap in the morning, but he was tired in the afternoon, but found it hard to sleep. He rocked back and forth on his hands and knees a lot, getting frustrated because he knows that he can crawl from this position, but can't quite figure out how to do it yet. Stephanie thinks he'll figure it out this week.

Didn't end up getting anything more than the two remaining cabinet guards installed today, but it's a start, and I could have gotten more done if I had been able to find a 1/16" drill bit. I'll have to get one from Mendard's or somewhere before tackling the drawers. I split the wood in one of the cabinets installing the thing, and I don't want to have that problem with the drawers.
Tomorrow I am heading to the school to do some clinic work. I'm planning to stop in on a few people and celebrate finally getting my last grade. Only took three months for the guy to get them in.