Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Trip Home Update!

Just wanted to share a few pictures with you. I'm remembering to take a lot of pics and videos while I'm back home. So far this trip has been excellent and we're really having a good time.

Okay, anyway, here ya go!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Yoo-Hoo and 88 Fingers Louie

Well, I was about half way through a Midnight Shift Security Officer's Night Before Christmas poem post, but I decided that it was turning out to be decidedly unfunny, so I deleted it.  Mostly, the problem I had was trying to rhyme the word "Caremark," which wasn't working out to well, and that was in the first line of the thing.  Well anyway, it's Christmas eve, and I'm at work.  I'll make no bones about being at work and blogging right now, because, well, there's nothing going on and I don't have anything to do right now anyway.  But how about a story?

About 9 years ago, I was smack dab in the middle of a Yoo-Hoo kick, where all I wanted to drink all day was Yoo-Hoo.  I was a total addict for a month or so in there.  So I remember that year having a couple Yoo-Hoo's in tow as we went to all the houses of relatives around the area on Christmas eve.  Also, instead of listening to boring old Christmas music while we drove to all the houses, we listened to 88 Fingers Louie's album Back On The Streets.  Well, somehow, the events of that Christmas 2002 ended up being repeated every Christmas eve until we moved to Nashville.  Now, whenever I hear this album, or drink a Yoo-Hoo, it reminds me of Christmas.  It's my little tradition, and I always forget to buy Yoo-Hoo until it's too late and all the stores are closed.  At least I have half of the tradition going on as I'm jamming Back On The Streets here at the desk tonight.

Okay, well that's all for now.  I'm going to play some air drums and wait for Santa to land his sleigh on the roof of Caremark.  Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.


Thursday, December 22, 2011

Vloggerated!!!


The Crying Baby Flight Fright

There are a few questions that I have that are involved in heading home this coming weekend(!).  Some of which are the mundane, like, should we take this laptop?  And even if we do, will there be WiFi?  I'm sure that is something I can look up or make a quick phone call to find out, but I just don't know.  But the bigger question involves the travel day itself.  First off, we're going to take the bus to the airport.  It's the cheapest way we can get there, because parking the car is too expensive and Taxis are very much too expensive around these parts.   I'm not looking forward to riding the bus with a baby and luggage, but we'll save a buck or two in the process, and my lovely wife, who is experienced with the MTA bus system thinks it will be okay, so I'll trust her judgement.  But what time do we have to catch the bus?  How long is our bus ride going to take?  Again, these are questions I can look up the answers to. The bigger question is, how will baby handle buses?  The whole trip, from getting on the bus to getting off the plane, it's going to be a long day.  Baby takes pretty scheduled naps, these days.  I hope she can catch some Z's on one of our shoulders.  I mean, she'll have to.

But speaking of how will baby handle stuff, my second big concern I have is the actual plane ride.  I had the same anxiety about having a baby in the car for a 10 hour car ride, and that turned out to be just fine, because she is an awesome baby.  But babies don't know how to cope with the changing pressure of takeoffs and landings of airplanes.  It can be uncomfortable, and when babies are not happy/uncomfortable, they cry.  Now, I've heard of a lot of people that have complained about having to be stuck on a plane with a crying baby.  I feel really bad that I'm going to be that guy (not the annoyed guy, the guy with the crying baby).  It's most likely going to happen, and I feel the urge to stand up and address the problem with my fellow passengers before we takeoff.

"Hey guys, I know it's sucks to be stuck on an airplane with a crying baby, and I'm sorry you all have to go through this, but honestly, who doesn't have noise-canceling headphones these days?  I mean, c'mon.  Slap em on and let's get to where we're going, already."

We're probably going to annoy some traveler, but you know what?  That sort of comes with the territory of flying with other humans, dude.  I can't help that my baby is crying, okay?  You're gonna have to get over it, because there is nothing you or I can do about it.

Look at how defensive I've already gotten about this?  The plane doesn't even take off until Sunday afternoon and I'm already defending our right to cry on airplanes.  Besides, your anguish of having to deal with a crying baby is nothing compared to the thrill we have of traveling home for Christmas.  So suck it, irritated traveler.  You are no better than anyone, and your problem with crying babies is just a reflection of our own misery that you don't have a family, or anyone that loves you. I mean...I'm assuming.

I'm so excited to go home.  It's going to be great.  Maybe baby will live up to her reputation of being an awesome baby and just be chill the whole time.  It would make the day a lot easier if she does.

See you all next week, folks.  (literary)


Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Sunday, December 18, 2011

The Mystery Note

For a few months, I've been collecting music project name ideas in a note on my iPhone. If a cool-sounding name for a project/band would strike me, I'd jot it down so I wouldn't forget it. Within that note, at some point, I had written "Scott Walker- The Drift." I don't remember writing this, but I know me, and I like to do that sort of thing so I can go check it out later when I have more time. So every time I open that note I see that written there but never looked into what it was and I forgot why I wrote it. So today I went to find out what needed to be saved for later.

As I said, I don't remember what made it so special that I had to write it down, but it must been something musical that I wanted to ripoff with my music project. I have done that before with other songs that struck a chord with me. So I assumed that "The Drift" was a song whose melody or structure I wanted to subtly steal.

I copy and pasted the words and headed over to the iTunes app. I chucked on my headphones and pasted those words into the search bar. It came up with not a song, but an album, released in 2006. I hit the ol preview play button on track one.

What is this? This is terrible. What on earth is this?

So I skipped to the next song, which just played some noise before the song kicked in and again, more weird. Track three was more of the same. Why did I write this down? Is this a prank on my future/present self? Did I feel inspiration by this because if this exists, I can have confidence to make my own music, because it can't worse than this?

As I listened on to more previews, it became apparent this was the weirdest, creepiest shit I had ever heard. It's just absolutely strange.

I don't remember why I wrote that down, but I now know this, Scott Walker made some terrible yet strange "music." I mean, at least it's something different, but this is way beyond me. Check it out sometime. I hope this wasn't someone's favorite music ever and I'm ripping it, but seriously, what the hell? It sounds like a high-pitched Elvis singing shoegaze.


Editors note: here's a pic showing that I apparently don't know shit about what's "good music"

Friday, December 16, 2011

Supervised Friday Musings

man, this kid kinda looks like me
You know how hard it is to write with someone looking over your shoulder?  That's happening right now.  It's like, a deeper level of scrutiny than normal.  It's like, I know when I'm writing a post that someone will eventually read it.  Hopefully, a lot of people will read it.  But when someone is right on, literally, on your shoulder watching you as you type, it's even harder.

So I flipped my sleep schedule a bit so I can attend a Christmas party today.  I stayed up all night long last night, and it was pretty difficult to do.  It was a real struggle not to just lay down on the couch and fall asleep, but I knew that would be a really bad idea.  Normally, I stay up late on Thursday nights and get very little sleep, so I can take a nap Friday evening before going into work.  Well, this evening we have to go to a Christmas party, so I couldn't be napping at that time.  So instead, I stayed up until 6 a.m. this morning.

I did it by just messing around on the computer.  It's amazing how much time I can waste doing pretty much nothing at all.  I did nothing creative.  I did nothing to advance myself or my personal wealth or health.  I did absolutely nothing useful, I mean in the grand scheme of life.  It was useful to me that I removed a bunch of crap music from the iPod.  Okay, that needed to be done, but not needed to be done.  I spent 6 hours in the middle of the night doing nothing at all.

So now I'm awake, and I'll be awake for the next 23 hours or so.  My lovely wife supervised this post from begining to end.  She just told me my second paragraph of this post is "crap."  I would normally change it, but for the purpose of this particular post, I'm just going to leave it.  It really is crap, now that I've read it.  This is why I have a wife.  To read what I write and tell me it's not so good, so I can improve.

Have a fantastic day.  

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Green Christmas

I have to say, it's pretty hard to get into the Christmas mood when it's 70 degrees.  Last night as I was walking the dog in shorts and a t-shirt, I had to stop and remind myself that it's the Christmas season.  It felt more like spring or early fall to me.  Now this isn't some kind of bragging, you know, like, "ha ha it's warm here be jealous you northerners."  It's just a fact that it's still weird to have a "green Christmas" every year.

Technically, if I remember correctly, last year we actually had a white Christmas here in middle Tennessee, but it's not like home's white Christmas.  There was a dusting on the ground, and so it was technically white, it's just not the same as trudging through ankle-deep fresh snow going into a relative's house.  It's just hard to remember that it's Christmas when it's 70 degrees outside.  That's all I'm saying.

Right now, my lovely wife is wrapping little baby Evie's Christmas presents.  It's rainy and warm today, and even though it's not a beautiful spring day like yesterday, it's still sort of feels like it.  It does not feel like December here.  So to make sure it felt like Christmas here in our little apartment, I've hooked up this computer I'm typing on to the stereo and have Pandora playing Christmas music.  I also turned the tree lights on.  Everything helps, but's I have to make a real effort to stay in the Christmas mindset.

Another thing that was a reminder yesterday that it is indeed the middle of December, it was 70 degrees, but the sun was going down at 4:30 p.m.  That sort of thing just doesn't happen on the days it's supposed to be warm.

So I'm trying to be in the Christmas spirit, but it's just hard when there's
no snow and when you don't need a jacket and stuff.




Shredder thinks he's presents 


Monday, December 12, 2011

Taylor University's Silent Night Tradition

College Sports have many great traditions throughout out all sports, but there is one, a tradition from Taylor University that has to be one of the coolest ones I've ever seen.

On the Friday before finals week, everyone gets all dressed up in pajamas and heads out the the Taylor U basketball game.  At the game, they stay dead silent, no cheering, or whatever.  But once the 10th point is scored for the home team, the crown explodes.  It's amazing to see.  Here's a video!




How cool is that, eh?  Man, that looks like a blast. Plus afterwards they go to a Christmas party and the President reads a Christmas Story, and they eat cookies and Santa is there, and all that jazz.  It seems like a nice thing for the students to break the ice and the tension before finals week.  I thought this was one of the neatest things I've seen.  Hope you enjoy it.  

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Vloggerated 12-11-11, A Week in "Review"

So I threw together a video tonight of crap that I collected this past few days, both pictures and videos.  I threw this together while drinking some adult beverages and a bit sleep deprived, as I have been awake for over 24 hours at this point.  Well, without further ado, here's my latest video, Vloggerated.


Tuesday, December 6, 2011

A Dad Who Cloth Diapers

What was my mindset when it came to cloth diapering before our daughter was born?  That it was an outdated form of child care.  I felt that with all the advances in diapers  made by Pampers and Huggies and all the rest, why would you cloth diaper?  What is this, 1947?  Why would you do that?

Before the baby was born, I had absolutely zero experience putting a diaper on a baby.  I had never done it.  In fact, I had to have the nurse at the hospital show me how to do it.  I had no idea.  So when my wife said we were going to use cloth diapers, I was pretty hesitant.  I can't even put this disposable on her, how can I put a flippin' cloth diaper on her, with all it's folding, and pinning and all of that?  Why did we have to make it so difficult?

Let's take a look at an image form Hollywood for a minute.  In the movie Back to the Future 3, Marty McFly goes back in time to 1885.  Shortly after arriving there, he coincidentally runs into his distant relative, Seamus McFly.  After sleeping off getting his head hit on a fence and being knocked out, he awakens to meet William McFly, his Great-Grandfather as an infant.  When Marty meets him, he holds him up and says "So you're my Great-Grandfather.  The first McFly born in America...and you peed on me."

You see, baby William McFly was wearing a cloth diaper and it only took about 10 seconds to get peed on with that cloth diaper.  This is the only visual of cloth diapers I had ever had.  But after learning about it, I learned that that scene in this modern day is a total misconception.  I mentioned above how I was aware of the advances in diapers that the major corporations had come up with for disposable diapers, but what I didn't know (because there were no TV commercials telling me so) was that the advances in cloth diapering were just as impressive.

I spend the majority of the time home with baby, because my lovely wife, who has the college degree, goes off and makes the real money.  I work part time on the weekends to help make ends meet.  What this means is that I'm the one who's home with baby most of the time.  I have gotten a whole lot of practice in it over the past 7 months.  But that doesn't mean that I'm a master of cloth diapering.  Without the guidance of my wife, I would be lost.  She did all the research and decided that cloth diapering is the way to go.  So as far as me being the one trying to convince someone that you should cloth diaper your kid, I'm not going to be all that effective.  I can't "own" someone in the cloth v.s. disposable debate.  I really don't know enough about disposables to have that debate.  What I can say is I know how it has been beneficial to us and our particular situation.

First off, if you don't own a washer and dryer, you probably won't want to do this.  You will be doing diaper laundry often.  With our stock, we do diapers about every other day.  We have a stack of prefolds (a type of cloth diaper) that we use, and I don't even know exactly how many.  But if you don't own a washer and dryer or have one withing a short walking distance, you will find cloth diapering very difficult, I believe.    There are several different kinds of diapers, all with their own names.  There are flats, prefolds, pockets, all-in-ones, all-in-twos, and probably even more that I've never heard of.  We have all of these types listed above except flats, but our good friends in Lansing swear by them.  Anyway, most of the time she gets a prefold, which is basically just a sheet of cotton with a thick part in the middle.  Once you learn how to put it on, it's pretty simple, really.  They stay attached with a thing called a snappy, which is like a elastic band with three ends and plastic teeth that hold into the cotton.  You cover the actual diaper with a waterproof cover that snaps or Velcros together.  The cover is formed into the shape of a diaper, and as long as you have the cover on right, there should be no leaks.  No pins, nothing like that.  Super easy.  It's just like putting on a disposable, only you have to attach the snappy, and you have to do a bit of folding under the butt to make it form into a diaper shape.  What is to be afraid of there?  I don't really want to get into the different types of cloth diapers here, because this is running long, and you can find that information very easily across the world wide web.

Weather you use cloth diapers or disposable diapers, you will eventually get poo on you.  That's one thing I've learned from all moms and dads.  Before our daughter was born, I was pretty grossed out by the thought of getting poo on me, but I think that because little baby poo is such a different consistency than adult poo, it makes it not so bad.  Just don't go eat any hummus after changing a poop diaper.  Some people have an issue with having a bag or bucket of cotton covered with human poop sitting around the house.  Yeah, I can't blame you there, but it's better than filling landfills with disposable diapers.  Those never go away, I mean in the grand scheme of the Earth.  But poo diapers are really easy when they're little.  It just washes out.  You don't have to deal with it until they start eating solids, because when you eat solid, you poo solid.  So you just swish it around in the toilet, big deal. (actually, the swishing is my least favorite part, but when you take a step back and think about it, it's not that big of a deal, really.  Get over it.)  Sure, you have to use a special laundry detergent when washing cloth diapers, but you use such a small amount, it's really not that bad of an expense.  I figured our water bill and electric bill would go up when we started doing laundry every other day, but to be honest, I havent' noticed.  Now, I don't manage the bills, because if I did, we wouldn't have lights or internet due to lack of payment, but from what I've gathered, there really hasn't been much of a difference.  Our shopping bill hasn't risen due to buying packs of diapers all the time, that's for sure.  One less thing to worry about at the store.

All in all, putting on a cloth diaper is absolutely not more difficult to master than putting on a disposable.  There is a price to pay up front to get all the supplies you'll need to get started, but it eventually evens out, and while I don't have the numbers, it has got to be cheaper than buying diapers all the time.  Another thing to consider, have you ever experienced a baby with diaper rash?  I have, once.  Once.  She has only gotten diaper rash one time, and it was horrible.  From what I've learned, babies who are in disposable diapers get diaper rash all the time, and they hate it.  As a parent, the last thing you want is a screaming, unhappy baby on you hands.  That's what you get when you have a diaper rash baby.  Cloth diapered baby = no diaper rash = happy baby.  That's a big deal, in my opinion.  I highly recommend you give this a serious thought, because it's probably not what you think it is.  I hope I could clear some misconceptions about the whole thing here.  I'm not an expert, I'm just a dad.  I can only say that my experience with cloth diapering has been very positive.  If you're a dad, or expecting to be a dad and you're wife of girlfriend wants to do this, give it a shot.  It's just a better way of taking care of your kid.  Isn't that what we all want?