Both mom and baby are doing well. If you’ll excuse me, I need to head over to the hospital to spend more time with them both before I work this evening.
(PS — I would have posted this last night, but our internet connection was down.)
So here’s a baby update.
A little over a month ago, at the ultrasound back in February, everything was right on target — estimated weight was about 4 pounds, 1 ounce. At the following ultrasound (about a week and a half ago) there was a concern. Estimated weight was only at 4 pounds, 11 ounces — half a pound (or more) behind the desired/typical target weight range.
This, in addition to the concerns with Mary’s gestational diabetes, back problems, and possible complications due to her medications, prompted the doctor to schedule a C-section for April 3rd.
That’s tomorrow.
At about 11:30am, we arrive at the hospital for pre-surgery prep, and at 1:30 Mary goes under the knife. It’s spinal anesthetic, so she’ll be conscious, and I’ll be there as well. A cut a few inches long, and out will come the newest addition to the family. Putting Mary’s insides back in order will take longer than the delivery.
The past week has been filled with the repetitious questions, “Are you ready?” “Are you excited?” “Are you nervous?” And, to be honest, I’ve been getting a little tired of them.
But now, with the delivery less than 24 hours away… I am starting to get those flutters of nerves in my stomach. It’s a lot like the anticipation I would feel before opening night of a show — keyed up, restless…
I’m not nervous about the delivery — we have a good doctor, and she does this sort of thing fairly regularly. I’m nervous about the next twenty years… this is a big event, and while I have friends and family who will no doubt offer support, advice, and so forth… there’s ultimately no real way to prepare for this.
You can take all the classes you want, read all the books on the shelf, but it’s likely to go out the window the first time you hold your child in your arms.
So… we will see what tomorrow brings. Until next time!
This post is going to be short, but it will introduce the idea I hope to run with this month.
Back on March 12, Wil Wheaton made a post to his blog about 30 blog posts in 30 days — kind of a NaNoWriMo for bloggers (but without the massive organization).
Since I have been rather lax in updating this blog recently, I thought I would make an effort to make daily updates in April. There’s a lot going on this month, and I would like to try and document as much of it as possible.
So… stay tuned to this space as the experiment goes forward. It’s sure to be interesting.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to work (which is decidedly uninteresting).
I confess, I haven’t been very good about updating this thing lately. However, my wife informed me last night that I needed to post something, because what kind of post was that back on the fifteenth? I mean, really? “Just beware”? Sheesh…
So, here’s a bit of a story. This weekend was wet and nasty. We started with some snow on Friday night, which changed over the next several hours into sleet, freezing rain and — eventually — straight-up rain. Friday night was the mid-month Vampire LARP up at UMO, and while I was planning on attending it at first, the weather was just awful, and I decided to stay home. I have no idea what happened (if anything).
(Which reminds me… I haven’t done an episode of The More Things Change in a while. I made one post recently, but much like this blog, that one has fallen into the Pit of Can’t Be Bothered Right Now.)
Saturday was a continuation of Friday, weather-wise. The precipitation stopped around mid-afternoon. The schedule for the evening included Mage LARP on campus (which got canceled). I got out of work at 6:30pm, and came home to find that the front walk was… well… flooded.
See, the snow that fell overnight was not washed away by the subsequent rain — it just sucked it up like some kind of spongy, amorphous, slime-mold creature spawned by a Gary Gygax fever-dream. You know how snow, due to the inherent crystalline structure of ice, and its airy consistency, is less dense than water? The stuff on the sidewalk in front of our house was solid water — not ice, but water in solid form. “Snow” (if you will) that was as dense as water. Take snow, replace all the air with water… that’s what we had.
The melting runoff from further uphill (we are just on the downhill side of the curve of our street), which flowed so nicely from the cleanly-shoveled sidewalks and driveways of our uphill neighbors, came to a gurgling halt on our front walk, which had been dammed by this damned (see what I did there — clever, right?) mutant snow.
You would step on this stuff, testing its solidity… and it would lure you in… tempt you with false resilience. You shift a bit more weight onto your foot, start to bring your other foot off the ground…
And the faux-snow-beast would swallow your lead foot with a mocking schplash (that is, snowy crunch mixed with watery splash — more the latter than the former), filling your footwear of choice (in my case — foolishly — sneakers) with its icy saliva.
This would be followed by a burst of profanity, and a desperate search for some honest-to-God solid ground to put the other foot on so you don’t end up with two sodden feet.
After negotiating the treacherous ground of the sidewalk (mainly by avoiding it entirely, picking my way across the icy drift of the front yard), I get inside the house, change my socks, put my boots on, and go out to open a channel to allow the uphill floodwaters to pass by our home unimpeded… and clear out the end of the driveway, which the city plows had so thoughtfully blocked with even more of this solid water.
It was an hour of wet, annoying, back-breaking work.
So that was my weekend. Hope yours was just as enjoyable.
It is late, and I need sleep. I will update more later.
That’s all.
Just beware.
I have some more news, but I’m going to crash early tonight. Updates later this weekend.
Hello all. I’m typing this entry with semi-numb fingers… we ran out of heating oil some time in the early morning hours, and the new delivery hasn’t come yet. The temp in the house is down to about 60 F (about 15 C for those of you who use a civilized temperature scale).
That’s all for now. Send warm thoughts.
Oy vey. It has been over two months since my last entry. There are two reasons for this.
(1) After NaNoWriMo wrapped up, I was a bit burnt out, and not having anything concrete to update people on every day, my writing progress on the blog stopped altogether.
(2) On January 1st, I finally broke down and bought a copy of the incredibly fun (and incredibly addictive) World of Warcraft. It has resulted in many long nights, and a lot of time taken away from other projects I really should be working on.
Anyhow… other than the huge loss of time that WoW has been, life continues much the same. Mary’s pregnancy is going well (I need to haul out the scanner and get some of the latest ultrasound pictures up for your viewing pleasure), work is consistent and solid, and the financial situation — while not completely out of the woods yet — is stabilizing.
A couple of recent news items that I would like to share. This past Monday, we learned that our good friends Pat and Leanne are expecting a baby of their own in August! This is cool, because then we’ll be able to share the joys and travails of raising a child — and our kids will have a playmate their own age.
(Now all we need is our friends Kevin and Beka to get on the horse and add to the gang.)
The other news item is RedBrick related… I’ll let the press release speak for itself:
FADING SUNS REBORN
(Auckland, New Zealand) February 8, 2007—RedBrick Limited announced today that they have successfully concluded negotiations with Holistic Design Inc. for a license to publish English- and German-language roleplaying products for the Fading Suns universe.
Fading Suns is a science-fiction roleplaying game set in the sixth millennium, when the stars are beginning to fade. A new Dark Age has descended on humanity, for the greatest of civilizations has fallen and even the stars are dying. Now, feudal lords rule the Known Worlds, vying for power with fanatic priests and scheming guilds. Nobles, priests, aliens, knights, starships, psychics, lost worlds, and ancient
artifacts—welcome to the universe of Fading Suns!James Flowers, RedBrick Company Director, said “Everyone at RedBrick look forward to taking up the reins of the Fading Suns roleplaying game line, continuing the excellent tradition established by Holistic Design. As huge fans of the game, we want the best for it. We recognize this will be a challenging universe to explore, and thank Bill Bridges, Andrew Greenberg, Chris Wiese, and the rest of the Holistic Design team, for giving us the opportunity.”
Chris Wiese, Holistic Design Inc. President, said “We at Holistic Design are very pleased to have the the RedBrick team develop and grow the Fading Suns Roleplaying Game line. Their top notch crew has the energy and vision to take the Fading Suns universe to the next level. From what Redbrick has in the works, the fans can expect great adventures in the far flung realms of the Fading Suns.”
RedBrick’s Fading Suns products will use the Victory Point System mechanics on which the game line was founded. James Flowers explained, “While the demand for d20 products has been strong, we feel our resources are best spent focusing on the primary system. To that end, we will be actively working on the long-touted Third Edition of the Fading Suns game, smoothing out some of the mechanics and bringing previously published and new products into the line. However, we have a lot to do
and our immediate focus is to get a couple of Second Edition products that are near completion published first.”Carsten Damm, RedBrick’s Fading Suns Product Director, said “We’re looking forward to engaging and working with Fading Suns fans, many of whom have voiced excellent ideas about where the game could go. Our aim is to tap into this pool of ideas and skills and make the best of it, keeping as true as possible to Bill Bridge’s original vision.”
RedBrick has assembled a team to work on developing the Fading Suns property led by Alex Wichert, a published German novelist who has been immersed in the Fading Suns universe since 1995 and is an active voice on the Fading Suns forums. As Line Developer for Fading Suns, Alex is responsible for ensuring continuity between the English- and German-language editions.
More information and forums can be found at RedBrick’s Fading Suns web site at http://www.fading-suns.com.
Fading Suns is a Trademark and Copyright of Holistic Design Inc. All Rights Reserved. RedBrick Limited are headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand, and also publish the popular Earthdawn® fantasy roleplaying under license from FASA Corporation. RedBrick’s company web site is http://www.redbrick.co.nz. Holistic Design Inc. are headquartered in Stone Mountain, Georgia, USA., and publish an extensive line of computer games and the miniatures boardgame Noble Armada, also set in the Fading
Suns universe. Holistic Design Inc.’s company web site is http://www.holistic-design.com.
That’s all for now. I’ll have another update soon… I swear!
I spent the last couple hours of National Novel Writing Month doing my best to (legitimately) boost my word count. Here’s where I ended up:
Not really near the objective… but more than one-fourth of the way there. I also learned a few things about myself and my writing over the course of the month.
First, my inner editor is very loud. One of the things you’re supposed to do during NaNo is ignore the inner editor, and just get words on the page. November is for writing, December is for editing.
I’m just not there. I spend a lot of time composing things in my head, choosing the right words, going back and tweaking as I move forward. Part of that is just my style, but another part of it is the fact that I spent a good year or so editing the Earthdawn Player’s Compendium — while I’m not a bad writer, I’m (presently at least) a much better editor.
The other thing I learned is that if I push myself I can produce — what I need to do is sit my butt in the chair and actually do it. Some days will be more productive than others, but it production is the point.
So… November is over… where do I go from here?
Well, the novel is going to be pushed off to a back burner for now. I’ve been kind of neglecting RedBrick, and I have some things I want to write for them. If I keep developing the mindset I’ve been working on for the past month, I’ll actually get something done, and probably feel better about myself in regard to the whole Earthdawn thing.
Don’t worry, the story isn’t going away. I will keep plugging at it, posting sections as I finish them.
I also plan on posting here more often… this month has seen a lot of production from me blog-wise, and I like to think that’s a good thing. It keeps my friends and family in the loop.
Anyhow… that’s all for now. My bed calls, and I have a long weekend ahead of me. See you on the flip side!
So I haven’t written anything yet today… and there are two more hours in the day.
Here goes nothing…