I realize things have been a little slow around here lately as my wife and I try to prepare for our son's arrival in December. I apologize for that but I hope you guys will understand, especially if any of you are parents yourselves.
I promise I'll get back to writing more often at some point. For now, we're just running around like crazy trying to get everything ready.
Marvel artist Skottie Young's father passed away last week and he wrote a lovely piece about it:
He was a good man, and as a Thor lover from childhood he was very proud that I hang my hat at Marvel drawing comics. There wasn't a person he came in contact with he didn't mention it to. When I bought my car, he mentioned it to the dealer as if Spider-Man would inspire them to cut a couple thousand off the price. Ha ha. He was proud of me. He was a husband and father of four who worked at CAT for 34 years so I don't have say that I am proud of him, but... I am very proud of him.
My wife--who is now 20 weeks along--had her 2nd ultrasound done last Friday, and although the baby seemed unwilling to cooperate with us at first, we finally determined that we're going to have a son! For some reason my instincts told me we'd be having a daughter, but my wife and the other ladies in her family all predicted otherwise, even her 5-year-old sister. Guess their 6th-sense trumps mine... [edit: my sister would like to make it known that she also predicted a boy. Carry on.]
We had no real preference one way or the other and are simply happy to know that the baby is apparently healthy so far. We have his name picked out already but we are still keeping it under wraps for the time being. The due date at this point is December 27th, so we may end up having a pretty awesome Christmas present :)
To save him some future embarrassment, I won't post the ultrasound proving that he's a boy, but I did find it hilarious that they labeled the photo "Boy Parts" with an arrow pointing right to the proof in case there was any doubt.
Yes, you read that correctly, my wife and I are expecting our very first baby!
We've known about this for a little while now, but we wanted to wait until we had the first ultrasound performed before making an announcement, to verify that everything was okay. We also wanted to tell both of our entire families in person first before making it public. The ultrasound you see above* was taken Thursday, June 16, 2011. It was an amazing feeling, seeing our baby and hearing its heart beating for the very first time.
My wife is 13 weeks along now, and the delivery date is expected to happen around the end of December or beginning of January. We are unbelievably excited and can't wait until to find out if it's a boy or a girl (which should be around July/August). And yes, we already have names picked out, but we're keeping tight-lipped about all of that until we know for sure what it is ;)
Now the preparations will begin as we get the nursery ready and stock up on supplies in the coming months. Wish us luck, everyone!
*If you can't tell right away where the baby is in the above ultrasound, it's the small monkey-shaped figure in the upper-middle, facing right, looking almost like they're lounging back to the left. The curved black area on the right side is where their umbilical cord would be.
Just read a fascinating piece published in March by Men's Journal. It centers on Daniel Kish, a man blind since infancy, who relies on an unusual method of sensing his surroundings. This allows him to ride his bike around town, hike through the wilderness all alone, and essentially experience the same type of lifestyle that most sighted people take for granted. The method? Echolocation. I'm serious, go read the article and it will explain everything.
One of the things I found most engaging about the guy is how he feels about peoples' misplaced kindness and unnecessary sympathy, when to him, blindness is more of an inconvenience than anything and isn't something people should feel sorry about. In fact, for most of his life he has seen himself as more capable than lots of his peers.
“Most blind kids hear a lot of negative talk. ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t move. No, here, let me help you.’ The message you get, if you’re blind, is you’re intellectually deficient, you’re emotionally deficient, you’re in all ways deficient.”
Reading Daniel's story has inspired me, to say the least. He has easily accomplished so much more in his life than most people can claim (myself included), and we should all take his example that there are no excuses for giving up on the things you want to do. I also found one section of the article particularly moving, involving one of Daniel's students, with whom he has shared his echolocation techniques. Go read the whole thing and you'll see what I'm talking about.
I hate to say it, but I just experienced my first car wreck ever recently. I'm 25, so I guess making it 9 years without any accidents is a decent figure.
I was driving down the highway to work like normal, and it just so happens that it had been raining for about 20 minutes beforehand, and some spots of the road were still pretty slick. Well, after we came around a bend, I noticed that we were about to reach a traffic jam of some kind.
I tried to brake, but the car wouldn't slow down because it was skidding on some sort of slick material, probably oil that hadn't been washed away by the rain yet. Since I wasn't slowing down, I tried to steer to either of the lanes next to me, but the car wasn't getting enough traction and there was nothing to do except wait to hit the car stopped in front of me. I can't tell you how afraid I was in that moment. I thought, "This is it. This is where I'm going to die."
We slammed into this old couple's car from behind, and the next 10 seconds were a confusing mess. I remember the airbags deploying, some sort of dusty material filling up the car, and me making an effort to pull over to the side of the road despite not being able to see anything. After stopping, I realized that my wife had been hit pretty hard by her passenger seat airbag and had the wind knocked out of her. She recovered after a couple minutes, but it was scary as hell.
Once we calmed down and made sure we hadn't broken any bones or anything, we called 911 and got out of the car to speak with the old couple we had hit. They were okay too, and although the nice lady's neck was hurting a bit, she declined to have an ambulance sent.
To make a long story short, my car was totaled. The entire front end was ruined beyond the possibility of repair and we had to call my uncle-in-law, who owns a tow truck. For the next few days, as the insurance company figured out what the car was worth, I had to bum rides from friends and family, which always makes me feel like a mooch.
Today, we got our insurance check. We had actually been thinking about selling the old car (which was a 2001 Chevy Cavalier) anyway, but we never expected to get much for it. It turns out that the check we received was for more than the old car was even worth, so the wreck turned out to be somewhat of a blessing in disguise. We've had our eye on a 2008 Honda Fit, and it looks like we're going to be able to afford the down payment now.
I'm probably going to be scared of driving in the rain for a while, but everything and everyone turned out okay in the end.
