Category: …And Little E Makes 3

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...And Little E Makes 3 Cooking With Code

Scary stuff

So I’ve only been home for about an hour now, having gone from work straight to the hospital to meet my wife, who has barely been able to keep food, water, or even so much as a pill down all day. After a stupidly long wait in the ER (the nurses helpfully crossed her name off on the sign-in sheet, believe they’d already seen her, which increased our wait by something like half an hour), she was finally seen by a doctor, who decided that it’s most likely a stomach virus of some kind. She was given something to help her with the nausea (something which also pretty much knocks her out, and supposedly won’t have any harmful side-effects for her or the baby), and after taking that was finally able to keep a little food down. She and Olivia have gone to bed for the night; normally Oberon sleeps with them too but I’m keeping him with me for tonight. Woohoo! Boys’ night out!
This was really our first “emergency” so far, and I approached it with a polite but firm “get out of my way or I’ll get you out of my way” manner. I was a bit miffed by the goof-up with the sign-in sheet, but I think it was an honest mistake.
I saw Henry (from the station) and his son there too. Good Lord. I remember when that kid was a newborn, and haven’t seen him since. Now he’s inquisitive, wisecracking, and seems to be just dangerously smart. I’ll count myself lucky to have a kid like Skyler. They were there to see another family member, and I got to catch up on some station gossip. Remember folks, sweeps starts one week from tonight! 😆
As fond as I am of the current Scribblings WordPress theme, I came to the realization recently that, for all the word I’ve put into things like random header graphics, I’m gonna have to change it all up again. Stuff like “Spamatazoa” and “Baby Makes Three” are supposed to be subcategories, but they’re not showing up that way. Ah well. More changes on the way. I may just say “to hell with it” and use the same theme that’s in use for most of the other sections, but I kinda like that it’s apart from those – it’s allowed to be a bit more bloggy.
Anyway, back to point A…it’s amazing how a little critter made out of my DNA and probably about the size of a gumdrop is able to scare the hell outta me like this. It kinda makes me reel a bit to think what it’s going to be like when said critter is more baby-shaped than gumdrop-shaped.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3

I guess I got over the machine noises

From my “baby book” filled out by my mother the first year or two of my life:

Birth To First Year

  • Likes: Bright colors – electric, neon or any kind of lights – Shawn’s weird noises
  • Dislikes: Machine noises! – loud, sudden noises

So that’s the story on the game room, folks. I was predestined to do it. Now, from an adjoining page about favorite toys and pets, a word about Lady, a big black lab my folks had when I was wee:

Feb. ’73 – met Lady and grabbed her nose, ears. Lady was very understanding.

Here’s hoping that Xena, Othello, Olivia and Oberon are in the same gracious mood in a year’s time – because given the size of this house, this baby won’t have a 9 month wait before meeting his or her first pet. 😆 Probably won’t have to wait as long as I did to see that first horse, either…
Obviously, Obi’s gotta lose the front claws now. We were trying to leave those alone unless they became a problem; now they’re gonna have to go.… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Music

I suppose that, upon further reflection, I would want to be like you after all

(Cryptic title is a play on the Alan Parsons Project song “I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You”.) Check out this list of remastered goodies from the upcoming Parsons Project remastered albums. Some of it’s really interesting, and some of it…well, you can tell they’re probably reaching. There are some parallels with the bonus tracks on the ELO remasters, such as the stripped-down mixes and the backing-track-minus-vocals mixes, the latter of which have thrilled the heck outta me on the ELO CDs.
Before either they or I die, I really want someone to stick Jeff Lynne and Alan Parsons together in a studio full of instruments and gadgetry and not let them out until there’s a full reel of tape left on the machine (or they run out of air, whichever happens first). Actually, what would be really interesting would be for them to pre-record vocals and basic rhythm tracks for about four or five songs each, and then each one takes a shot at producing his own 4-5 tracks and the other’s 4-5 tracks in their own style. So you get the same ten songs, reinterpreted in radically different ways – Lynne has regressed into a kind of retro-rockabilly style with light strings, while Parsons has gotten an education in the ways of electronica. That would be interesting. (Not as interesting as having Neil Finn or Peter Gabriel do one song’s worth of guest lead vocals each into the mix, but I doubt that’ll happen anywhere except in my dreams.)
I lurk on the ELO mailing list and on a Parsons forum or two, and I’m amazed that there are folks who like one, but not the other – at their mutual heyday (the late 1970s), both groups shared some distinctive similarities in style, and I was in love with both of ’em.
All of this is just me trying to distract myself from other things. We informed the whole family over the course of the last 36 hours or so; I think the happiest reaction we got was from my father. I really get the impression that nobody ever expected us to unleash any mischevious spawn upon the surface of this planet. Honestly, we’re as surprised as anyone else…but you know what? I’ll take it. I haven’t been this happy in a long, long time, and the thought occurs to me that maybe this is what I’ve been missing in my life for years. And yet I’m not sure it could’ve come at a better time, what with me having just left the crazy slavery of teevee and more or less perfectly positioned to be a stay-at-home dad.
I can’t wait to read to my child. This is gonna be so freakin’ cool. I know there are diapers to be changed too, but you know what? That’s a pretty small tradeoff. (It’s not like mucking horse stalls for eight hours straight.) (And it ain’t like dustin’ crops, boy.)
And here you thought it was the expecting mother who was supposed to be glowing.… Read more