TTFN

In case it's not obvious, I've given up on blogging, at least for now.

I guess you could say it's a time thing. Or maybe you could say that I don't feel like I have any right whatsoever to discuss what most interests me (Christianity and the church) given my level of (non-)participation there. I can believe stuff and discuss stuff until I'm blue in the face, but until I can somehow get my act together to join the saints in their mission to declare the gospel, feed the hungry and comfort the suffering-- or at the very least show up for worship once in a while-- it's just a bunch of wind.

There are other things I could blog about ("family, music, books, what-have-you"), but if my family life is keeping me too busy to show up for church, it's sure as hell keeping me too busy for all the rest of this.

I'm leaving the blog here (for as long as blogger/google will let me get away with it) because I like the name, and because hope springs eternal. But honestly I expect I'll see resurrection before this blog does.

Thanks for tuning in.

I'd rather be playing quidditch

It is the absolutely best weather of the year, right now. Here's the view from my office window:


See what I mean? I want to form a band or write a trilogy or something. At the very least take a road trip. Any suggestions?

Sleepless Infant & Daddy Syndrome

I am sitting here listening to my baby girl attempt to sleep on her back. I am fairly sure we would both be asleep now if I turned her over on her tummy. But NOOOOOOOOO, we don't want to do that. It increases the risk of SIDS. In fact, if I'm understanding this article correctly, turning her over would increase her risk of dying inexplicably in her sleep from 0.062% to something more like 1.5%.

This smells like B.S. to me.

On the other hand, if the wiki(I-read-it-on-the-web-so-it-must-be-true)pedia article is to be trusted, if I don't go flip the poor child, I'm depriving her of memory-consolidating non-rapid eye movement sleep and probably slowing her motor and social development. And did I mention that I'm awake too? :-7

So I say it's a wash. Let's all get some good, life-enriching, mind-recharging sleep in whatever position we happen to find comfortable, okay??

OK, she's asleep now. So I guess I won't throw my offspring to the lions by callously flipping her over into the deadly "prone" position after all. But watch for a 4 AM update...

"Fookin' deadly!" ...and there's two of them

Somehow or other I keep getting hooked into novels whose main characters are clergymen. I figure this is because either (a) stories that deal with truly enduring themes must ultimately cross paths with religion, or (b) I'm thinking about theology way too much.

Either way, I want to recommend a couple of books that have impressed me lately, and you can make what you will of my apparent clerical obsession. Neither of these are exactly "hot off the presses" anymore, so you can get 'em in paperback.

The Sparrow falls somewhere between Out of the Silent Planet, The Poisonwood Bible and the most lurid alien abduction story you've ever heard. The premise was what grabbed me: What happens when the Society of Jesus sends the world's first mission to contact an extraterrestrial race? And Russell makes the most of it. I could talk about the pathos of the intercultural clash, the well-developed and likable characters, or how the book strikes just the right balance between "hard" science fiction and the mythically fantastic. But you should know that there are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments as well (one of my favorites being the scene in which Jesuit linguist Emilio Sandoz is almost killed by an alien for playing a Van Halen song too loud). Real science fiction purists will doubtless roll their eyes in places, but if you ask me, this is great science fiction precisely because it's not trying so hard to be science fiction.

At the other end of the "grandeur of setting" scale sits my second recommendation, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. My wife read this first, and I don't think she quite "got it", but bless her for knowing what it would mean to me and recommending it on that basis. The story is conceived as the diary of an elderly and dying Congregationalist minister in a tiny Iowa town. On its face that sounds dull to sensibilities (like mine) shaped more by Star Wars than The Straight Story, but it's non-stop poetry. Robinson does a tremendous job bringing the reader into an aging man's thoughts, and evoking the beautiful, painful details of life in a small midwestern town that's dying almost as surely as the narrator. As it must be with any story of this type, the mainstay here is character, not plot. But as with The Sparrow, I think I like this book so well because it's not self-consciously "literary"; it doesn't seem to be trying to fit into a niche or satisfy a particular set of critics so much as tell a good redemption story. If you like that sort of thing, this book will put a lump in your throat.

Hope you weren't counting on public transportation

...to see you through the gas price spike.

Not that I was planning on it anyway. I looked at the routes shortly after we moved into our house, and realized that the Huntsville bus system could get me to within a 15-minute walk of my place of work in a mere 75 minutes. (It generally takes me under half an hour door-to-door in my car.) No thank you.

Then again, I'm not sure how much my kids will appreciate all the extra time I had to spend with them when they're choking on carbon monoxide while treading water among the flooded ruins of some major coastal city...

Express delivery

Laurel Elizabeth Howard arrived weighing six pounds fifteen ounces, and measuring nineteen-and-a-half inches from top to toe, at 8:49 AM last Sunday morning. It was a near thing: we had arrived at the hospital a little after eight o'clock.

If you ask Adrienne, she'd tell you it probably wasn't as quick as it sounds. She'd been having mild contractions since Friday at least. We went into the hospital late Friday night when Adrienne had a bit of bleeding, but from all appearances the birth was still days or even weeks away, so they sent us home Saturday morning.

She spent Saturday night fitfully but not altogether without rest, waking up now and again for the occasional mild contraction. By Sunday morning, they were becoming more frequent and more, um, demanding. We actually debated whether or not to go to the hospital ("They'll hook me up to a fetal monitor, and I'll have to just lay there"), but a few contractions later it became evident that we'd better be on our way. Grandpa arrived to look after Erin, and we were off to the races.

Once we got to the hospital, they checked Adrienne and told us she was four centimeters and 90% effaced. We interpreted this as "Yep, you're gonna have a baby today, but it's gonna be a while yet." I called my parents, told them we were in the hospital, and sent them on to church.

Adrienne arrived at the hospital knowing she would probably want (need) an epidural, but determined to resist as long as possible. After ten minutes, she decided that resistance was futile, and "encouraged" the nurses to find her an anesthesiologist. They paged him (one Dr. Haas, as I recall), and he arrived promptly, but as it turned out, not quite promptly enough. By the time he walked into the room, it was clear that Adrienne had missed her opportunity for an epidural, but Dr. Haas thought he might be able to at least give her a saddle block. He asked her to roll on to her side.

The good doctor briefly surveyed the situation, then looked pointedly at the delivery nurse and asked Adrienne to lay back down. Then he walked across the room and called the delivery nurse over. I overheard him ask, "Am I delivering this baby?"

As it turned out, he was. There was not a thing in the world he could do at that point but put on his catcher’s mitt. To his credit, he was incredibly cool about it—one might almost say “sedate”. The Ob. Gyn. showed up to the party a few minutes later for the mopping up work; Dr. Haas’ parting joke to us as he sauntered his way back to anesthesiology was to request that we name the child after the delivering doctor (“Wilhelmena”). I have to say I thought seriously about it for maybe ten seconds. Dr. Haas, my hat is off to you.

Mother and baby are both doing well. Erin is thrilled with her little sister. When she visited us in the hospital on the first day, we had a hard time convincing her to go back home without “her baby”. She’s been quite helpful and supportive in her three-year-old way. It touches me to see how she “looks after” Laurel, how she tries to interact with her, how distressed she becomes when the baby cries. I’m sure it won’t last and that sibling rivalry is just around the corner, but it’s reassuring to me that her first response hasn’t been “Can you please take that back to the hospital?”.

I could write a while on what a different experience it is to welcome a newborn when your extended family is around to share it, but I’ll have to save that for another post.

Big news

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce the imminent arrival of our second daughter, codename "Junior". This picture was taken last week, just shy of 18 weeks. She's due in August. All indications are that she is completely healthy. Adrienne says this pregnancy has been a little tougher than the last one (she seems to be going straight from nausea to heartburn with no break in between) but she's glad that she doesn't have to get her act together to go to a regular out-of-the-home job this time around.

Erin is thrilled at the prospect of a baby sister. The baby in Mommy's tummy is her favorite topic of conversation. Mine too, really. It's so good to finally be able to tell people.

The word I keep coming back to is "blessed". The word I keep hearing from other people (especially fathers of girls) is "outnumbered". :-)

A Valentine Haiku

No card this year, hon;
parenthood consumes all time.
Love ya anyway!!

Catching up

The blogosphere truly rocks for getting back in touch. I want to send out a "Howdy" to a couple of folks who added comments to my last quasi-substantial post, and I'm doing it here because (1) I don't think I have either of your e-mail addresses, and (2) I figure there's some chance you've got my feed and so might be prompted to read this.

First, a big hello to Philip, whom I haven't seen since high school. I've been catching up with your blog, and your posts on boredom at work catalyzed this post that I'm writing from, yes, my desk at work. In my job, I'm one of a small number of software types, in a small satellite office dedicated to product benchmarking, in a gigantic multi-national corporation that manufactures microchips. My workstation/networking needs are therefore well below the horizon of corporate IT, and our level IT support therefore sucks with a mighty suction. I truly believe it must affect weather patterns over North Alabama. Anyway, long story short, the server on which all my forward momentum depends is down, and so I find that I, too, can now rationalize blogging at work for a few minutes. So, in lieu of an e-mail, here's my stated intention to keep better track of your blog and, I don't know, form an on-line support group for disappointed idealists or something.

Second, to "Eirishluck": Otter, you long-lost ne'er-do-well, is that YOU??? Where are you, man?? How's life?? Your blogs seem to have been dormant for months, so I'm not clear on your current status and whereabouts... Send me an update!

And that brings me to my next point: I haven't exactly advertised my own e-mail address in this space for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who's ever received an email offering C H E A P C 1 A L 1 S. But I'm now going to take a page from Dave's book and tell you in excruciating, machine-confounding detail how to e-mail me.

Type these initials: "g", "m", and "s".
Then type my last name: "howard".
Then type that funny symbol above the "2"; you know the one I mean.
Now type the name of a well-known free e-mail service that starts with "hot" and ends with "mail".
Then type a period.
Then type "com".

Confusing, I know, but I take comfort in the hope that your confusion is shared by the spambots. E-mail me, gents, if you have time and inclination. (That goes for the rest of you, too.)

Blog resuscitation

"Clear!"
<thunk>

- Every episode of every medical drama ever broadcast

I'm still here, just busy. But in honor of Super Tuesday in Alabama, where if you're a Democrat you can pretty well count on seeing your state's electoral votes go to the other guy, I offer 7 Habits of Highly Ineffective People (or at least, one particular highly ineffective person):

1. Blog. A lot. Keep up with all the blogs in your blogroll, too.
   
2. Always take a book to the bathroom.
   
3. Stay up-to-date on Grey's Anatomy and all its spin-offs.
   
4. Don't miss a minute of any meeting to which you're invited.
   
5. Leave no footnote unread, no hyperlink unclicked.
   
6. Insist on understanding the code before you change it.
   
7. Vote in the "blue" primary in a "red" state.
   

There. Easy steps to accomplishing... well, nothing at all.