It's A Boy!

Emily's sister gave birth to a boy this morning. Like me, he has been born without a pre-determined name. Unlike me, I am sure his parents will name him before he leaves the hospital.

This is the fourth kid whom I will be an uncle to, but the first on Emily's side. It is very bittersweet for me. It is so awesome and exciting to be living in the same city that this kid was born and to be around while he grows up. But it also makes me wish I could live in the same city that my sisters' kids live in.

But mostly I am very excited for the Emily's sister and her husband. I cannot wait to meet their new kid tomorrow night and see the new parents. Pictures will likely follow.

Check Me Out

I really to read in other people's blogs what books they are reading, a list of ten random songs on their iPod, or what movie they just saw. I don't know why. It's like you get to read their personal mail or rummage through their underwear drawer. Not that I do those things. Or want to.

Seriously. I really don't. Those of you that know me can still invite me over without feeling like you have to put your utility bills and tighty whities in a safe.

I think Netflix should have a feature where you get to show your queue to the world. Our queue is now 250 movies long. It's almost like a status or pissing contest. Who can have the longest queue? A friend of mine has a kickass underwear collection, oops, I mean Netflix queue. He has over 400 movies in his Netflix queue. Something to aspire to.

Right now we have Spanglish, Maria Full of Grace, and (here comes the dirty underwear) Pilates for Dummies. My wife chose it. It's for her. I swear. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I did take a pilates class last spring. The instructor congratulated me for being the first male graduate. I still am not sure if I should be proud of this.

I will say this, the same guy who has over 400 movies in his Netflix queue, took yoga and dropped out. I'm not sure what that means. I think we're still both a couple of sissies, with or without a diploma from an exercise class populated mostly with women, or an endless Netflx queue.

I also wanted to list the other pop culture goings ons in our household.

The three most recent CDs I bought were: Liz Phair (Somebody's Miracle), Dwight Yoakum (Blame the Vain), and The Hopefuls (The Fuses Refuse to Burn).

The Hopefuls CD, I already have. I bought the second copy for my sister, whose birthday was over seven weeks ago. We'll see if I actually mail it before 2006. Anyway, it's a great CD. Guitar pop good and trivial enough to make you feel young again. Incidentally, Emily and I saw them play Wednesday night with this sexy baglady. They were awesome, as was hanging out with her yoga school dropout of a husband.

I am reading Bill Bryson's In A Sunburned Country.

There you have it. I'll let you know how I like that pilates video.

Son-In-Law

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Today I am taking the day off and enjoying the fact that I am still wearing my pajamas, while it snows outside, and Emily reads the paper.

Pancho is watching us wondering when the hell he gets to do what he wants to do. I keep telling him to lick his balls. He usually seems to enjoy that, but I guess he's bored with that for now. Fear not, my four-legged friend. We'll go for a nice, long, lazy run soon.

Last night we went to Emily's uncle for Thanksgiving. There were about 20 of us there and I enjoyed talking to everyone, but no one is as entertaining as Emily's mom. Here are some highlights:

"I think guys [men] are so retarted. There's no doubt about it."

"Who really trusts experts anymore?"

Emily's mom spends a lot of time lamenting how times have changed and how crazy it is that kids are surrounded by hi-tech toys and electronics. She also spends a lot of time at Value Village, which is like a local Goodwill. But lately, most of her engery is spent getting ready to become a first-time grandma (Emily's sister is expecting a child any day now).

So I asked Emily's mom if she feared this grandchild may be one of those kids "spoiled" by things like iPods and X-Box 360s.

She said, "Oh I don't see this kid getting spoiled by stuff from Value Village."

Little tidbits like this make me laugh.

Ents Rule

I want to make this perfectly clear before I begin this post: I love trees. I love the gigantic maple tree in our back yard, and the ample shade it provides in the summer. I think we have an awesome backyard, to be honest, but it would be a godforsaken patch of dirt and sun, if 80% of it wasn't shaded by the maple tree. So I also love the tree's leaves.

I read and saw The Two Towers, so I know it's a bad idea to piss off the Ents by hatin' on their brethren the maple tree. I'm not about to suggest we tear our maple tree down to clear space for some ogre-making factory like that evil wizard tried to do.

But I will say this, I do hate 50923784023 dead maple leaves in our backyard. We have a tiny city lot and I still managed to get 23 bags full of leaves from the backyard alone.

My childhood home was on a lot twice the size of where I live now, and on a corner. So there was a side yard to rake as well, and at least seven pecan and mesquite trees in our yard. I don't think we ever eclipsed 30 bags of leaves raking all three yards. And I got 23 bags from one freaking tree.

I never thought I could dislike a sports team, based on its logo. And I never thought I'd have any opinion about any hockey team, ever, because I don't get hockey and don't really want to. But now, after two falls of raking, I really don't have a lot of good things to say about Toronto's hockey team, the Maple Leafs. And shouldn't they be the Maple Leaves?

So to summarize:




Treebeard and the Ents: GOOD

Toronto Maple Leafs: BAD




I'd rather offend this hockey fan (or even the ones with slightly more testosterone) than Treebeard. Hell I'd rather offend the entire hockey team than one Ent.

The Thrill of Victory

That would be Paul Tergat, as you see below. The close observer will note the agony of defeat, Hendrick Ramaal, in the background. Lying down on the ground. After losing the New York City Marathon. By less than a second.




What an awesome picture.

What an awesome race.



Images from http://www.photorun.net/.


The race was actually last week, but these pictures are so good, I thought it was worth talking about. A friend of mine has Dish TV and gets the New York station that covers the whole race. So we watched the whole thing live. It was such a great race from to start to finish. Who knew watching skinny guys run for over two hours could be so fun?

Jungo Jemba

Last night Emily and went to a party thrown by a friend of mine. He moved into his house six months ago and just bought furniture so he figured he'd finally throw a party. So he had a "DDR, Giant Jenga Party." Once I promised Emily that DDR is "Dance Dance Revolution" (a dancing game for the PlayStation) and NOT Dungeons and Dragons, she agreed to go.

For anyone who thinks they are the ultimate lover of games, this guy can put you to the test. He and a few of his friends are obsessed with Jenga and he knew there had to be something more. So he came up with Giant Jenga. He went to Home Depot and had them cut 30 4X6 10" pieces of wood. The result: Giant Jenga in his garage. We'd typically get the Jenga tower up to seven or eight feet before it would crash. It was awesome.



Image from http://www.hasbro.com/jenga/


Emily got a little stressed out. But you always had ample warning before the tower was about to fall.

Up next on this guys docket: he wants to design Jumbo Operation. I think they already have that though. It's called First Year Med School Student Gets a Cadaver.

Get Out the Vote

Tomorrow is Election Day. I hope everyone gets a chance to vote.

Our friends have a compelling idea. It would be interesting to see how much our political landscape would change if this became a law.

Our underlings in Puerto Rico are also onto something.

Why Buy New When Slightly Used Will Do?

Why watch a DVD when it's on TV?

Emily and I are half-watching Pirates of the Carribean on ABC right now. Complete with commercials and the crappy reception we get for ABC.

We have the DVD, which is commercial and fuzzy-reception free.

But that would somehow ruin the movie-watching experience.

As an aside, Emily has an uncanny knack for recognizing supporting actors and connecting them to previous shows and movies. In this case, she recognized the guy playing British commodore in Pirates of the Carribean as the same guy who played the straight man role in the BBC version of Coupling. Nevermind that he's wearing one of those goofy British military uniforms in this movie.