It’s Heather again with another update. I’ve been trying to get a web gallery up of the pictures I took of cute not-so-little Brian, but my computer’s acting up. So instead, you’re going to get three individual links. Just. Like. This. Number three is by far my favorite – it’s the Thinking Baby! More later, I promise… if my computer will cooperate.
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His First Picture
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Here he is, Brian David Lawver (named after Jen’s dad), less than ten minutes old, and beautiful. Heather took a ton of pictures which she promised to post soon. Keep your eyes peeled for a link.
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Big Baby!
My name is Heather, I’m Kevin’s little sister – I’m posting for him by proxy because he has some important news. 🙂 Jen went into labor early this morning, and at 10:55am, their new son was born! He weighs in at an impressive nine 36cm, and we’ll have pictures up as soon as I can get to the hospital with my digital camera. 🙂 Both Jen and the baby – whose name they haven’t told us yet (!!!!) – are doing great. I’ll update with more information as soon as I’ve received it. Isn’t this exciting?! 😀 Happy Birthday, New-Lawver, and welcome to our crazy world.
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The Reverse of Happy
I tried to follow up yesterday’s exercise with the opposite. The same rules apply except for the techno one, with one fudge. I honestly can’t remember putting Teardrop on a mix cd, but the way I love that song, I can’t believe it. Maybe I just never shared it with anyone.
A couple other things I realized while compiling this list:
- I don’t have a lot of depressing music in iTunes. I know I have more at home that I haven’t ripped yet, but it wasn’t handy to grab right this minute.
- A lot of stuff I thought was depressing really isn’t. Morphine? Except for a couple notable exceptions, they’re not depressing at all. The songs are sometimes, sexy, other times ironic or cynical, and sometimes just plain bouncy.
- Ben Folds and Phish both throw some great woe-is-me classics in between the happy poppy stuff. Evaporation on Whatever and Ever Amen is amazing, as is Dirt from Farmhouse
Here it is, a CD I whimsically call Depressed as Hal:
Title Artist Album II\. Lento E Largo – Tranquillissimo Henryk Gorecki Symphony No. 3 Everybody Hurts R.E.M. Automatic For The People Dirt Phish Farmhouse I Grieve Peter Gabriel Up Trouble Coldplay Parachutes Sour Times Portishead Dummy Don’t Change Your Plans Ben Folds Five The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner Gone For Good Morphine Yes Teardrop Massive Attack Mezzanine Evaporated Ben Folds Five Whatever and Ever Amen Passacaglia/Bud And A Slice Joe Jackson, feat. Brad Roberts – voice, Judy LeClair – bassoon Heaven & Hell Sweetness Follows R.E.M. Automatic For The People My Head Sounds Like That Peter Gabriel Up Maybe I’ll Come Down Soul Coughing El Oso -
Happy Schmidt
Taking a break this afternoon, I decided to create a happy mix CD (for no good reason, titled Happy Schmidt). I gave myself a couple rules:
- I couldn’t use any songs that I’ve put on another mix cd (that I could remember)
- no techno (electronica, trip hop, etc)
- avoid stuff I listen to all the time.
Here’s what I came up with:
Title Artist Album In The Days Of The Caveman Crash Test Dummies God Shuffled His Feet Ain’t Goin’ to Goa A3 Exile On Coldharbor Lane Count ’em Up Queek 2NU Ponderous Underground Ben Folds Ben Folds Five Short Skirt/Long Jacket Cake Comfort Eagle Rudie Can’t Fail The Clash London Calling Brick House Commodores Millennium Funk Party Tripping Billies Dave Matthews Band Crash You Better Be Doubtful The Housemartins The The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death **updated** Rotten World Blues Eels rotten world blues EP Glamour Boys Living Colour Pride Penguins Lyle Lovett I Love Everybody Birds Of A Feather Phish Story Of The Ghost Boll Weevil The Presidents of the United States of America The Presidents Of The United States Of America Shiny Happy People R.E.M. Out Of Time Stay Up Late Talking Heads Sand In The Vaseline (Disc 2) What Is Hip? Tower Of Power Millennium Funk Party Jack-Ass Beck Odelay Once In A Lifetime Talking Heads Sand In The Vaseline (Disc 1) **updated** That’s Not Really Funny Eels Souljacker updated I was listening to the CD in the car and realized that I Wanna Be A Witch, while really happy and bouncy, contains some profanity. This wouldn’t normally bother me, but the CD had to be Max-friendly too, so I’m making a new copy. I dropped that song, and added Rotten World Blues and That’s Not Really Funny, both by Eels. Good, jangly, rocky stuff.
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The Unknowing Pirate
I have been a very good Employee today. I deserve some kind of SuperEmployee sticker and a bad picture of me in a cheap frame hung on the wall in our temporary lobby that says, “Kevin’s One Super Employee”. I may go do that myself tonight with Max. We’ll make a “Kevin’s One Super Employee” plaque. Then, I’ll bring to work really early tomorrow morning and hang it up before anyone gets here. Maybe I should start with someone else so no one suspects me. Although, I think I’m the only person here who would do such a thing, and everyone knows it. I have a pirate flag up on my wall, ferpetessack.
And to answer your next question, I have a pirate flag on my wall for a very good reason. I’ve been feeling extremely subversive lately. There’s usually a subversive undercurrent running through whatever I do. Recently, though, the undercurrent has become an undertorrent, and I just can’t help it. Maybe I’m feeling extra-subversive because my boss, and boss’s boss have both left in the past six weeks, and I’m feeling a little… grieved? Yeah, that’s as close as I can come to describing it. I lost the guy who hired me, protected our group from a lot of garbage, was in our corner the whole time, and made us better. I’ve also lost the best manager I’ve ever had. It’s kind of thrown me for a loop.
I’m not quite sure what to do next. I still have my projects, the things that “make me go”, but I don’t have the support system I had last week. I don’t have a manager I can tell anything to, give her any problem, and compliant and she’ll go fight the battle, or filter the message appropriately. I have a crappy filter. I usually just come out and say it, which isn’t the most productive trait to possess at the moment.
I’ve come to realize that I work best with a manager I can trust completely. I don’t want to have to play political games, and watch what I say with my direct manager. It’s too stressful, and makes work no fun at all. I have to be able to tell my manager what’s really going on, and have them do the same. If there’s no honesty in that relationship, there’s no trust. When there’s no trust, nothing productive happens. I’ve done pretty well so far in my career finding people I can trust, and good working relationships. The times I haven’t had that support system have been an absolute nightmare.
I don’t know… this post started out really light and sunny, didn’t it? I was faking it. There’s nothing sunny or light going on here. I’m worried that I won’t find that working chemistry again, and I’ll just be working instead of having fun. I’m afraid I’ll spend my days playing politics instead of building cool stuff and challenging myself. I’ve done that already. I’d rather not go back to it. You know, maybe everything will be alright. Maybe it won’t. It’s the not knowing that’s killing me at the moment.
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A Cure For The Blues
Read a really funny and disgusting story about a worm.
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Thuddius Giganticus
I went with Jen to her OB appointment yesterday, so I could see our baby. Doctor GoGo (a story for another time) wanted another sonnogram to check the size of the kid because Jen is measuring “large”. We arrive in the little room with the dim lights and Jen exposes the Belly that contains the Baby. Goop was applied, and the magic wand started showing us our kid. The tech started taking measurements, and then redid them. And redid them again. And one more time after that. The measurements all point to us having a gigantic baby. Right now, today, four weeks before Jen’s due date, the estimate is that the baby weighs….
10.6 pounds!!!
Needless to say, we were a little shocked. After all the remeasurements to make sure she had it right, the tech laughed, and asked us to tell her how big the kid is when it’s finally born. Of course, the ultrasound could be wrong. It could be off a pound and a half in either direction. Which means… we could either have a 9 pound baby or a 13 pound baby… TODAY!! Jen’s not due for another four weeks, and the kid could gain half a pound a week for the next four – that’s two whole pounds. Let’s do some math. We could end up with a baby between 11 and 15 pounds. All the newborn clothes are going right back in their bags, back in the boxes, and back in the closet. The kid’s going to walk out.
Last night, we were trying to come up with names for our goliath child. If it’s a girl, I think we’ll name her Giganta or Thundara. If it’s a boy, Thud has a nice ring to it. Or, we could be biblical and name him Goliath. It’s really up in the air at this point.
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Nothing
I’ve got nothing to say. Stuff is happening, and I’m doin’ what I always do. I just have nothing to say about it. Isn’t that worth reading?
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The Other Lawver Blogger
My little brother asked me this week what it would take to set up a blog. He played right into my trap. It took twenty minutes to set up the new domain, MySQL db, an hour to wait while Dreamhost got them all set up, then another 10 minutes to install and configure Textpattern. I’m still getting used to Textpattern (the look is all my fault), so look for changes, and maybe a real domain name in the future. With all that said, I proudly present, my little brother, compatriot, super pal and best friend: Tim (the mighty).