Wednesday, November 14, 2007

This Time Next Month

The title of this post is a time I look forward to. This difficult semester will be over, we will be moved, and we can just focus on enjoying the arrival of our new little guy. I suppose it is a testament to how much we have going on at the moment that the thought of having a new baby added to our family sounds like a break. It ain't exactly a vacation, but I look forward to being able to focus all of my energies on my family for a while instead of being pulled in so many directions. I felt the baby moving around in Ashley's tummy the other night, and I felt the same sensation come over me as the one I felt in the months and weeks leading up to Henry's birth, that eagerness to finally meet him, to hold him in my arms, say hello, and just love him. Until then little guy, you just stay in there and bake.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Seven + Seven

Sometimes you're just walking down the street minding your own business when POW! some dirty ninja jumps out from behind a dumpster and zings you with a damn ninja star. And then, as if you weren't already bleeding all over the pavement, another ninja swoops down from above an awning and pops you with yet another ninja star.

So it was that I got tagged not once, but twice for the same meme by two different people, Cami and Sybil. It's that seven things meme where I'm supposed to tell you seven random facts about myself, and seeing as how I get dosed twice, it appears that I have to come up with seven + seven things to share with you. Since I've been letting the old blog get cold with neglect, I'm going to cheat a little bit and use some of those seven + seven things for updates on the latest in the wide world of the Holmes.

1) For those of you who don't read my wife's blog, first of all, shame on you, and second of all, it looks very much like we will be moving in a couple of weeks. No, you didn't miss anything, our place has been off the market for a while now, but that didn't stop it from getting an offer. Here's hoping it all goes through.

2) Clrly i neds mor lernings:

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3) Speaking of which, I have to pat myself on the back just a wee tiny bit because I realized that this time around on the higher education trip, I'm taking the whole thing much more seriously. Part of it, of course, is that I'm paying for it myself, along with all the support I get from my wife in giving me time to go to class and do the work I need to do. Plus the fact that I feel pretty compelled to move towards this line of work. They say you get out of education what you put into it, and I have to confess, I slacked a lot on the putting in part when I was in college. I got decent grades, sure, but there's more I could have done. But I had a great time.

4) My son is crazy. Or rather, he's cwazy. No really, he'll tell you so himself. One of his latest things to inform us is "Henry cwazy! CWAAAZZY!" Then he'll run real fast, fall down, lift up his adorable little head, and say, "Cwaaazy! CWAAAAZY!"

5) I crave real true community, the kind where people know and care for each other. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what this means to me, and how to find it, but I sometimes feel really disconnected from my fellow earth dwellers.

6) The Catcher In The Rye was the first book to change my life.

7) Between getting sick a few weeks ago and the demands of school, I haven't done anything resembling exercise in about a month. My clothes still fit, so I can't complain too much, but I find that with decreased physical demands being placed on my body, I'm more susceptible to eating sweets, particularly donuts. I asked my friend Brandon about this, and he filled me in on the fact that as you lower your amount of exercise, your body actually starts to smell like a donut, leaving you more vulnerable when actual donuts are available. Who knew?

8) I mentioned my wife's Hollywood crush a while back, which prompted her to ask if had any such crushes, which made me realize I sorta don't. My only famous-person crush would have to be Liz Phair since she sings dirty songs about love and pain and is hot while doing so, though I don't think she counts as a celebrity since I've never seen her on Famecrawler.

9) My wife sometimes accuses me of being ghetto because I'll do things like eat a half-piece of toast that's been sitting on the counter for a few hours, but she's the one who wants to keep chickens in the back yard at our new place. Chickens. In the middle of the city. Now who's ghetto?

10) I don't know all that much about Scotch, but I know enough about it to know that if you want to buy me a bottle of liquor for a gift, a bottle of something single-malt would be well-received and shared.

11) I'll spend a lot of time thinking about trying to accept people as they are, faults and all, without judging or stereotyping or hating, and I'll think about how people are the way they are for a reason, and people each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and how even though somebody might do or think something that I absolutely loathe, I might very well be just like them had I walked in their shoes, and I'll get to thinking about all this stuff and get this warm fuzzy love the world vibe going, and then some jackass in a Beemer will cut me off or tailgate me and I'll instantly shove that person into the profile of someone I hate.

12) I made up a playlist of all my favorite heavy music to listen to when I'm by myself, but I find that on the rare occasion I am by myself, I rarely listen to it. Kids are loud enough.

13) As regular readers of this blog know, I started a masters program in counseling at a seminary last spring. As the first class day was approaching, I pulled out the pink sheet of paper with the schedule printed on it to get some piece of info, and realized that I had missed the first class day! Holy shit! Not how I wanted to start out my graduate career! Frantic, I looked up the professor's email address in the school directory and went to email him, though I don't recall what I was planning to say. But when I pulled up my email, there was a message from the director of my program stating that the first day of class had been cancelled due to the sudden death of the professor's mother. So you can imagine the series of emotions that hit me in the next split second. I started to blog about it back then, but just felt too, I don't know, too weird about it.

14) I dislike dancing, so don't ask.

I'm supposed to tag seven people now, but there's no way that's happening. I'll just tag Ashley since she needs a good taggin.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Lions and pirates and parents pimping out their kids for candy, oh my

I used to hate it when I was little and my mom referred to my friends as my "little friends." Anyway, Henry went trick-or-treating with a couple of his little friends on Halloween night. As you can see, the pirate costume was popular with the white single-digit-aged demographic this year. Ye be clickin fer larger view says I. To thee. Regarding that.

Holmeses say yar: