Published writer, compulsive reader, Old School Whovian, Match Game enthusiast, NKOTB fan, data hoarder, and - surprisingly, given that list - married with four kids. Welcome to my take on life, fatherhood, entertainment, and whatever strikes my fancy. Enjoy!
We had another doctor's appointment Wednesday, and the news is as follows: if Parker doesn't pop out on his own before then, Lisa will be induced on March 10th.
The due date was/is floating between March 5th (ultarsound results) and March 14th (traditional, last-date of period dating) so he shoud be fully cooked either way.
Knock on wood.
I'll keep you updated.
If you ask me - and since you didn't, I'll just pretend someone did - Ebay is heading for disaster faster than a Rob Lowe TV series heads for hiatus.
I speak from experience here, with the love and insight only a true devotee can bring to the table. I've been an Ebay member for seven years, long enough that I can boast of saying 'I bought it on Ebay' and then having to explain what that meant.
I've bought hundreds of items, and I've sold hundreds too. Clothes, books, electronics, you name it, I've bought or sold it, and with nary a problem to report.
Heck, there was a time not so long ago when if I saw a listing for a time machine made out of tin foil and Jell-O, I'd bet my life that I'd be having dinner with Abe Lincoln the day the auction ended.
Sigh. Memories.
Six of my last eight transactions have ended, if not in disaster, then with disillusionment.
There was the video camera that was dead on arrival.
On the selling end, there was the one buyer that just never paid, and another who dragged the process out with endless (contradictory) claims that her mother had fallen ill.
There was seller who charged $3.00 for shipping, then sent the item in a standard envelope for $.83. A handling charge you say? That'd be the stock answer, but how hard was it to drop that in the mail? What, they don't have mailboxes in Baltimore?
There was another seller who sent only half of the decorations we purchased.
And last, but certainly most infamous, there was the $40 lamp that took a month to arrive. When it showed up at our door it wasn't the item pictured in the auction, but gosh golly in the fine print the seller reserved the right to substitute at whim.
More than a month later we're still waiting for a refund.
Ebay used to resemble a universal rummage sale, with a casual, one-on-one atmosphere. Now sellers feel compelled to toss caveats and vague threats on every listing, and buyers have the art of bidding so down pat that a beginner has almost no chance to win unless they're willing to mortgage their house.
As near as I can tell, the villain seems to be the 'power sellers', the mass quantity sellers who dominate the new marketplace. The vast fees they pay may help Ebay's bottom line now, but they'll be the downfall of the company in the long run.
Don't believe me? The guy that sold us the lamp had a feedback rating of around 99%, enough to give us unwarranted confidence. After the fiasco, a closer look showed he averaged fifty dissatisfied customers a month.
True, a thousand people were happy with the service in the same thirty days.
But over the course of a year, there are now 600 people who'll hesitate to use Ebay because of that lone seller.
Even an old hand like me gets a case of the willies. I just bought a camera at Best Buy for $50 more than I saw it listed for on Ebay. A year ago I'd have stuck with the ebay model, but forgetaboutit: I didn't have the time or the energy to deal with the hassles.
Tell me that's the kind of thing a company wants to hear from its customers.
Oh, I'll still use the darn thing. Where else can I buy an 11x14 sepia print of Babe Ruth or sell a battered old textbook?
Only now I'll do it with my fingers crossed.
I watched most of the Academy Awards tonight, a useless bit of trivia unless you're tallying up all the hours I've wasted in my life.
Making it all the more pathetic is the fact that I've only seen one of the contenders for Best Picture, the over-rated Ray, which made the experience about as thrilling as watching election results from Bolivia.
Still, there were some items of note:
I thought Chris Rock was a funny host, even if his misplaced Bush rant embittered me almost as much as the "Vote for John Kerry!" sermon at a Barenaked Ladies concert this summer.
(I say almost, because Rock is an American citizen and entitled to his opinion; it was awkward enough paying to see a Canadian band, much less one that didn't know how to mind their own business)
But it's hard to hold a grudge against someone that starred in Friday. I got over it.
Anyone else think Renee Zwellger looked older than Clint Eastwood? Yikes.
I'm in love with Kate Winslet (okay, lust) so I was hoping she'd win, but to be honest I don't think her role in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was worth a nomination.
I am, however, quite happy that Sunshine's writer, Charlie Kaufmann, won an Oscar.
Having Penelope Cruz and Selma Hayek partner up to present an award must have been someone's idea of a joke. I haven't had to wade through that an accent that strong since my cable box was stuck on the Yakov Smirnoff festival.
Joke ruined by a mere week's timing: Is it just me, or have you noticed that Alan Alda and the BTK killer resurfaced at the same time?
My wife took offence to Scarlett Johnannsen's answer to "What actresses did you idolize as a child?" saying it sounded rehearsed and unrealistic when she said "Judy Garland."
Maybe. But she's still mighty hot.
Al Pacino: if that hair gets any higher he could trade places with the singer from Counting Crows.
Robin Williams should thank heavens for the gag order imposed on him. At least now he has an excuse for not being funny.
'Bout time Morgan Freeman won an Oscar.
Antonio Banderas, Carlos Santana, and a movie about a Communist murderer. There should be a joke in there somewhere, but I can't think of one.
Most overblown blog response to the Oscars: to paraphrase a right-leaning site that shall go nameless, an author blasted the left-wing Hollywood establishment. He then went on to praise the hard-working farmers and construction workers of America whose "only golden statuette is the silhouette of the morning sun upon their brow."
Uh, yeah.
I was amazed to see that Virginia Madsen was nominated for best supporting actress. I don't mean that as a knock. After all, in my teenage years I spent many a fond moment watching her fine performances in late night cable movies.
Or as I like to call them "porn, but don't call it a porn because it's R rated and they only take their clothes off and fake having sex"
Guarantee: despite their lack of nominations, twenty years from now the only movies people will remember from 2004 are Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11.
And finally, 'tho I never thought I'd see the day, a moment where I felt a certain fondness for Ms. Streisand, as she seemed genuinely happy for Clint Eastwood.
So did his 96- year- old mother in the audience. Thank God for her genes indeed - maybe it means we'll have another twenty years to see Clint work his magic.
Last week my three-year old misbehaved at a store, yet stubbornly argued that she should still be rewarded with a candy. Her admament defence dragged on for nearly the entire ride home.
"I'll say this much for you," I told her "You're a tenacious little girl"
As soon as I saw the evil glint in her eyes I was fearful. "Why you say I have ten asses?" she said.
"I didn't say that, I said tenacious. It means stubborn. And don't say that word."
"Ten asses?"
"I said don't say that!"
"Why? Why you say I have ten asses? I don't have ten asses. Momma, Daddy said I have ten asses .Do you think I have ten asses?"
"You know full well what I said! Now stop saying that! It's not funny!"
Which was, in retrospect, not all that believable a statement while my wife was giggling in the front seat.
Raise my daughter among less reputable parents and you'd have a cross between Michael Corleone, Ozzy Osbourne, and a Disney Princess.
I stopped at my parents' house tonight to pay my respects. As expected they offered me a bag of groceries from their cupboard (they often confuse my rotund appearance with the symptoms of starvation. Not that I mind; they buy much yummier food than we can on our budget).
I was also, by sheer lack of timing on my part, subjected to the evening news.
Now I detest television news: national and local, cable and broadcast. Every cliché on the subject is dead on - from the stilted banter and thirty-second in-depth analysis, to the hysterical weathermen who want this overweight smoker to buy into the idea that a thunderstorm may just be my undoing. I'll stick to the newspaper and the 'net, thank you.
[Of course, on the plus side, some of the local anchors are hot.]
But my parent's are addicted to the stuff, so there I sat. And wouldn't you know it, right after the 'special investigation' into whether those work-at-home emails are a scam (surprise, they are!) I actually learned something.
It seems the US is pushing hard to host the Olympics again, this time in New York City.
For a good minute I was filled with pride. I was ten years old when the Olympics hit Los Angeles and I remember what a big deal it was - the majesty, the patriotism, and the boatload of free food McDonald's had to give out as prizes when the Soviets backed out and ceded the playing field to us.
Then I thought about it, and now I'm left half-hoping we aren't awarded the 2012 games.
If I were a New Yorker, I'd be hard-pressed to see the economic value to my city. Say it is well-organized and does well, which is no sure thing. Is that enough to offset the cost of building an 80,000 seat arena in Brooklyn - a building that has to be built if New York has any shot at all of winning the bid?
Add in years of additional traffic congestion and the fact that building these projects means evicting and leveling countless businesses and residences, and I don't see how this adds up as manna from heaven.
Let's not even bring up the subject of security . . .
But I'm not a New Yorker, and so my opinion, rightly, means as much to them as their opinion on foam cheese heads does to me.
But as an American, go back to what I said about the magic I felt watching the '84 Olympics. It seemed like a rare and special event, something that may not be repeated in my lifetime, an athletic Haley's comet.
So much for that.
In the last twenty-five years we've hosted one version or another of the Olympics on four occasions. Add New York to the list and,I'll have seen five Olympics on American soil before my fortieth birthday.
By that time, the Olympics will seem about as special as a rerun of Home Improvement.
Wile I normally hold the admirably Americentric view that the rest of the wold can take a flying leap, I wouldn't blame folks overseas if they looked upon us as a monopoly, ready and willing to outspend everyone for the honor.
That's not the Olympic image I want to cultivate.
I'm sure most people disagree with me; so be it.
One last parting shot though - if one of my kids ever makes the Olympics, I'm sure the trip of a lifetime would be all the more special for them if it didn't begin and end at someplace serviced by Greyhound.
I must truly be stupid, because everytime I try to load the pics the proper way they're so big they warp the page . . . I think I have to change the pics themselves before doing the whole AOL thing, but I don't know how to go about that.
Odd, they look great on the monitor and on paper . . .
So anyway, follow the links below to view the pics (I'll be adding more later).
And yes, I'm in one, but I look like poop. But to be fair I was sick at the time, dressed in scrubs, and most importantly, everyone knows the camera adds 150 pounds.
[If you are reading this via email updates, check the site itself later today. I'm going to try and load some pictures of the room in question. Wish me luck]
Taking care of a baby doesn't seem like half as much trouble as preparing for their arrival. (Of course it helps that I work and get a pass on most of the sour moments, but I digress)
When our oldest was born it meant tearing apart the room we used as an office/library, disposing of one cherished collection after another from our more than quarter-century of child-free years, painting, and decorating.
Our second was a bit easier, since they were both girls and would share a room, but still involved a drastic reduction in income and space.
Alas, this third time to the maternity ward will produce the long awaited Parker, son of Daniel, son of Edward, Son of Michael, son of John.
'Bout time my wife's eggs managed to recognize a Y-chromosome.
(kindly skip the science lecture. Science will eventually discern that that while the man directly determines a child's gender, a woman's egg has a specific gender preference and can accept or refuse a given visitor.
Thus, it's all her fault)
Now, last summer we'd moved into a three-bedroom flat to give us more breathing room. Like most old houses in Milwaukee, the bedrooms are small. The girls occupied the smallest as a bedroom, and we made the second into a playroom for them, with my wife painting a mural complete with a castle and princess on the wall.
Parker's impending arrival meant scrapping the playroom, which broke my heart.
We needed to move the girls out of their room and into the playroom, but to do that seemed impossible. Two beds - even toddler sized - would chew up almost all the space in the room. Remember, we still had to account for their toys, rocking horses, TV, dresser, bookcase, and table.
The solution seemed to be bunk beds, but standard bunk beds would chew up most of the room too. No one seemed to sell toddler sized bunks, even online, and a carpenter we contacted said no one would make them because of the danger of putting a toddler on an upper bunk.
Well, necessity being the mother of invention and all, I decided to make them myself. My wife's brother offered to help, and I accepted. Since he knew what he was doing and I didn't, it seemed like a wise choice.
Let it be known that I am not well known for my mechanical prowess. I can tune up a car, I can do light household maintenance, and once upon a time I built a nice little shelf in shop class, but that's it. If I'm shown what to do I can replicate it, but I have very little experience and thus very little knowledge.
Plus I can't measure worth a damn, which is a bad trait for carpentry.
Never-the-less, we pushed on.
I based the plans on a picture of some beds I found online, and used some ideas from a very basic plan I found on a different site, but modified it quite a bit. We reduced it in size, making the top bunk only 51 inches off the ground and the total height (including a canopy) 67 inches. Instead of a single post on each corner we crafted duel posts secured with carriage bolts, which made the bed strong enough to hold the weight of both my brother in law and myself - some five hundred pounds - before we'd even finished making the braces or screwing it together.
We made sure the bed rails and ladder steps were spaced a safe distance apart, routered the boards to eliminate sharp edges, abandoned the original design for the bed support and used both 2x4's and particle board, and recessed the mattresses to prevent them from slipping.
It wasn't easy. It was time consuming, there were mistakes and do-overs, and it ran so close to the end of the pregnancy that my nerves were getting frazzled.
But we did it.
And we did it cheap too - the total cost was under $150, and that included the satin fabric my wife bought to drape the bed like a princesse's castle.
(as with everything, you don't see problems with a design until you actually use it. I found the height of the canopy so low my daughter hits her head, so we're redoing it. Which means the pictures don’t show the fabric, which sucks).
And did the girls like it? Please! On February 19th, the first day it was in the house, they didn't want to leave the beds all day, not even to eat dinner! And my twenty-month old took to her bottom bunk - her first time sleeping outside a crib - like a champ!
Now all that was left was the nursery.
Many thanks to Bob Kohn for his help in making the beds, Eric Chambliss for transporting it and his wife Chris for some free hardware for the construction, Jonah Slapczynski for helping sand them, and Jeanne Scorsone forthe loan of a second sander and for some fantastic work on creating the canopy.
PS. Here's a pic of the completed canopy - the only negative is we matched the sheer fabric too well to the walls, rendering it almost invisible.
I appreciate all the kind words about the delivery, both in the comments and via email, but let me clear something up: while the stats show progress towards the birth, we haven't entered the home stretch yet. Some women can take weeks to move from 2 to 3 centimeters. The due date remains either March 5th or a week later, depending on if you go by ultrasound data or the last missed period.
I'll keep you all updated and I hope the wishes are repeated when it is time for the big event :)
Also -if you are not an AOL user, feel free to use the comments page that can be found on the left of the page in the 'about me' section.
