This past Sunday Kim and I were at our usual Indian buffet lunch at Papadam. We were the only people in the restaurant until a couple our age walked in. The guy had a baby bjorn on, complete with a baby in it.
They sat down at a table near us and looked over at Jackson, who was snoozing away in his car seat. The mother asked how old he was, and Kim replied that he is 3 months old. She said that their kid was also three months old!
Kim said yeah, this past Friday was his 3 month birthday. The woman replied that their kid's 3 month birthday was also this past Friday.
The subject of hospitals came up next, and it was determined that they both were born in the same hospital.
Kim: Weren't you in the breast feeding class, and your kid started crying so you had to leave?
Woman: Yes, that was us!
So we randomly ran into someone whose kid was born in the same hospital on the same day.
We exchanged numbers and arranged a play-date for the two kids.
Jackson is making my life weirder every day.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
I ordered a few books on amazon.com. Kim found this to be a great affront to everything that our family stands for. Our family standing for the following values, in the following order:
Jackson
Eating with Jackson at Italian Village and Indian Buffet
Work
Sleep
Ourselves
But anyway, I was not deterred. I read World War Z by Max Brooks over the last few days, and it was awesome.
If you watch The Walking Dead or are into zombie stuff at all, this book is definitely worth it. And you probably want to read it before the movie comes out - the trailer looks like it is full of "fast" zombies, which the book does not have at all. Slow zombies have shown themselves to be particularly awesome. Look at The Walking Dead! 28 days later was okay, but the whole point of zombies is that they are slow and not particularly intelligent but just overwhelm you with persistence and numbers.
Anyway, World War Z is not your classic tale of a group of survivors who make it to safety. Rather, it is a series of interviews with individuals who survived the zombie war.
There is the Chinese doctor who first investigated the outbreak.
There is the man who made a fortune peddling a false vaccine.
There is the soldier who fought at the disastrous battle of Yonkers, NY.
There is the man who came up with the ingenious, but morally troubling strategy plan that was the turning point in the war.
There is the mercenary who protected celebrities in a safehouse.
There is the rogue Chinese nuclear submarine.
Interviews are not repeated until the very end of the book, so you get a ton of different perspectives and storylines. There are some heroes and some villains, but for the most part there is gray.
If you like zombie stuff in the least, this book is a must read. It is the best written thing I've read in quite awhile.
Next up (if Kim lets me) - The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver; The Revolution was Televised by Alan Sepinwall.
Monday, January 14, 2013
You know what is a criminally underrated comedy? The Other Guys. We caught it again this weekend, and while we'd seen the movie awhile before and laughed a good deal, we forgot about it. It didn't disappoint a second time.
I think it was really an under the radar hilarious movie. And look at the cast:
Will Ferrell as Detective Allen "Gator" Gamble
Mark Wahlberg as Detective Terry Hoitz
Eva Mendes as Dr. Sheila Ramos Gamble
Michael Keaton as Captain Gene Mauch
Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo in Rome) as Roger Wesley
Samuel L. Jackson as Detective P.K. Highsmith
Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) as Detective Christopher Danson
Rob Riggle as Detective Evan Martin
Damon Wayans, Jr. as Detective Fosse
Bobby Cannavale (Gyp Rosetti in Boardwalk Empire) as Jimmy
Andy Buckley (David Wallace on The Office) as Don Beaman
Ice-T as Narrator
Some pretty good scenes, indicative of the type of humor in the movie:
Ferrell and Wahlberg's relationship:
Terry Hoitz: No, I don't like you. I think you're a fake cop. The sound of your piss hitting the urinal, it sounds feminine. If you were in the wild, I would attack you, even if you weren't in my food chain. I would go out of my way to attack you. If I were a lion and you were a tuna, I would swim out in the middle of the ocean and freaking eat you and then I'd bang your tuna girlfriend.
Allen Gamble: OK, first off: a lion, swimming in the ocean. Lions don't like water. If you placed it near a river or some sort of fresh water source, that make sense. But you find yourself in the ocean, 20 foot wave, I'm assuming off the coast of South Africa, coming up against a full grown 800 pound tuna with his 20 or 30 friends, you lose that battle, you lose that battle 9 times out of 10. And guess what, you've wandered into our school of tuna and we now have a taste of lion. We've talked to ourselves. We've communicated and said 'You know what, lion tastes good, let's go get some more lion'. We've developed a system to establish a beach-head and aggressively hunt you and your family and we will corner your pride, your children, your offspring.
Terry Hoitz: How you gonna do that?
Allen Gamble: We will construct a series of breathing apparatus with kelp. We will be able to trap certain amounts of oxygen. It's not gonna be days at a time. An hour? Hour forty-five? No problem. That will give us enough time to figure out where you live, go back to the sea, get some more oxygen, and stalk you. You just lost at your own game. You're outgunned and out-manned.
[pause]
Allen Gamble: Did that go the way you thought it was gonna go? Nope.
Ferrell's hilarious treatment of his hot wife:
Allen Gamble: This meal is terrible... it tastes like roasted dog asshole. I asked myself, "Who would slow roast a dog's asshole and feed it to me?" You would.
And of course some stuff about Ferrell's prius:
Terry Hoitz: What is this?
Allen Gamble: Its my car, Its a Prius.
Terry Hoitz: I feel like we're literally driving around in a vagina.
There are much worse ways to spend a Friday night.
I think it was really an under the radar hilarious movie. And look at the cast:
Will Ferrell as Detective Allen "Gator" Gamble
Mark Wahlberg as Detective Terry Hoitz
Eva Mendes as Dr. Sheila Ramos Gamble
Michael Keaton as Captain Gene Mauch
Ray Stevenson (Titus Pullo in Rome) as Roger Wesley
Samuel L. Jackson as Detective P.K. Highsmith
Dwayne Johnson (The Rock) as Detective Christopher Danson
Rob Riggle as Detective Evan Martin
Damon Wayans, Jr. as Detective Fosse
Bobby Cannavale (Gyp Rosetti in Boardwalk Empire) as Jimmy
Andy Buckley (David Wallace on The Office) as Don Beaman
Ice-T as Narrator
Some pretty good scenes, indicative of the type of humor in the movie:
Ferrell and Wahlberg's relationship:
Terry Hoitz: No, I don't like you. I think you're a fake cop. The sound of your piss hitting the urinal, it sounds feminine. If you were in the wild, I would attack you, even if you weren't in my food chain. I would go out of my way to attack you. If I were a lion and you were a tuna, I would swim out in the middle of the ocean and freaking eat you and then I'd bang your tuna girlfriend.
Allen Gamble: OK, first off: a lion, swimming in the ocean. Lions don't like water. If you placed it near a river or some sort of fresh water source, that make sense. But you find yourself in the ocean, 20 foot wave, I'm assuming off the coast of South Africa, coming up against a full grown 800 pound tuna with his 20 or 30 friends, you lose that battle, you lose that battle 9 times out of 10. And guess what, you've wandered into our school of tuna and we now have a taste of lion. We've talked to ourselves. We've communicated and said 'You know what, lion tastes good, let's go get some more lion'. We've developed a system to establish a beach-head and aggressively hunt you and your family and we will corner your pride, your children, your offspring.
Terry Hoitz: How you gonna do that?
Allen Gamble: We will construct a series of breathing apparatus with kelp. We will be able to trap certain amounts of oxygen. It's not gonna be days at a time. An hour? Hour forty-five? No problem. That will give us enough time to figure out where you live, go back to the sea, get some more oxygen, and stalk you. You just lost at your own game. You're outgunned and out-manned.
[pause]
Allen Gamble: Did that go the way you thought it was gonna go? Nope.
Ferrell's hilarious treatment of his hot wife:
Allen Gamble: This meal is terrible... it tastes like roasted dog asshole. I asked myself, "Who would slow roast a dog's asshole and feed it to me?" You would.
And of course some stuff about Ferrell's prius:
Terry Hoitz: What is this?
Allen Gamble: Its my car, Its a Prius.
Terry Hoitz: I feel like we're literally driving around in a vagina.
There are much worse ways to spend a Friday night.
Monday, January 07, 2013
At some point early in our child-raising I suggested putting a blanket on Jackson to sleep. Kim looked at me like I was a fool and told me it was a SIDS risk.
SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is the name of what happens when your baby randomly dies for no discernible reason. Yes, it is terrifying. Noone seems to know why or how it happens. Just that it happens, albeit not too often (6.39 per 1000 births in 2009).
As I've learned, despite there being no knowledge at all as to the mechanism of SIDS, various risk factors have been identified. They include everything in the world. For example, sids.org and babycenter.org list the following as increasing the risk of SIDS:
Sleeping on their stomach
Blankets
Soft mattresses
Pillows in the bed
Toys in the bed
Sleeping in an adult bed
Sleeping in your arms
Overclothed baby
Exposure to tobacco smoke
Exposure to people with respiratory infections
Exposure to crowds
Minor respiratory infections
Minor GI infections
Lack of pacifier
Lack of breast feeding
Having siblings
Being a boy
Of course, most of these things make Jackson a happier baby. Sleeping in our arms? Sleeping in our bed? Crowds? LOVES all of that stuff. Sleeping on a "firm" mattress pad in a co-sleeper with no pillow? Unsurprisingly, he HATES IT.
We're slowly moving away from blindly abiding by the list. Its just too difficult to do all of these things. And for what? After 30 years researchers still don't know how or why it happens, or really how these things are supposed to help. And what kind of gain is is it going to give him? .01% less risk? We'll keep him sleeping on his back and use a sleep sack instead of a blanket. Those seem to be the big offenders anyway.
A co-workers wife was talking to us about it this Summer. She said something along the lines of - I'm not saying that SIDS isn't a real thing. But you can't let it control every aspect of your life. Sounds good to me.
SIDS, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is the name of what happens when your baby randomly dies for no discernible reason. Yes, it is terrifying. Noone seems to know why or how it happens. Just that it happens, albeit not too often (6.39 per 1000 births in 2009).
As I've learned, despite there being no knowledge at all as to the mechanism of SIDS, various risk factors have been identified. They include everything in the world. For example, sids.org and babycenter.org list the following as increasing the risk of SIDS:
Sleeping on their stomach
Blankets
Soft mattresses
Pillows in the bed
Toys in the bed
Sleeping in an adult bed
Sleeping in your arms
Overclothed baby
Exposure to tobacco smoke
Exposure to people with respiratory infections
Exposure to crowds
Minor respiratory infections
Minor GI infections
Lack of pacifier
Lack of breast feeding
Having siblings
Being a boy
Of course, most of these things make Jackson a happier baby. Sleeping in our arms? Sleeping in our bed? Crowds? LOVES all of that stuff. Sleeping on a "firm" mattress pad in a co-sleeper with no pillow? Unsurprisingly, he HATES IT.
We're slowly moving away from blindly abiding by the list. Its just too difficult to do all of these things. And for what? After 30 years researchers still don't know how or why it happens, or really how these things are supposed to help. And what kind of gain is is it going to give him? .01% less risk? We'll keep him sleeping on his back and use a sleep sack instead of a blanket. Those seem to be the big offenders anyway.
A co-workers wife was talking to us about it this Summer. She said something along the lines of - I'm not saying that SIDS isn't a real thing. But you can't let it control every aspect of your life. Sounds good to me.
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