I am a person like me

On the night my son was born as I waited anxiously for the nurses on duty to finish running a multitude of lines, I wandered about in the halls of the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).

Over the course of eight hours, I had gone from the mind-numbing boredom that comes from managing a tour company in Chicago in February to a new father, worried about his son who had to be delivered three months early. After crossing the threshold into the third trimester on a Sunday, my wife needed an emergency delivery on Tuesday to give both her and the baby any chance of making it through the night.

To see that sentence hashed out so bluntly is still quite a shock. It seems better suited to a subplot on an ER rerun than to my life and the disconnect is still nearly as wide as it was on that night this February. Months after the fact - and with the added security of a healthy baby boy and a wife who rebounded spectacularly in a matter of days - my wife and I would have a few discussions about what happened that day and how neither of us chose to focus on the danger she was in, only on the months that our son would be forced to fight in the hospital. We agreed that neither of us would ever fully understand just how bad things could have been and that we were each OK with that possibility.

That night, though, I was antsy and off-kilter and tasked with juggling two families who wanted to see their grandson or nephew and struggling to learn the rules of the NICU and what we needed to do in the meantime.

In the hallway, on the wall across from the elevators and just around the corner from the restroom was the huge quilt seen above. I immediately thought it looked like one of the kids from the Rugrats cartoons, only with a hospital band and a few more pieces of hardware. On some level, I thought it was cute and touching and was likely put up to make little folks feel more comfortable about their stay at a childrens' hospital.

It wasn't until weeks later that I made the connection that the only difference between that baby and my own was that my baby usually looked a lot less cheerful and had thousands more dollars of equipment in his pictures. There and then I was taken by a sudden and unmistakable feeling that I was not simply passing through this floor on my way to another floor - this was our life.

My son is coming up on six months old - less than that for those familiar with terms like "adjusted age" - and shows no signs of anything out of the ordinary for a baby of his "ages." Recently, I poked around the pictures taken since February and even I am amazed at just how far he has come.

In between, my stance on health care and the hospital experience has changed in some regards and been steeled in others as I came across families in the NICU and throughout the hospital who were just like us - in a place they didn't expect to be and trying to make the best of it.

I'll save the long-winded, impassioned plea for health care/insurance reform for later when I have more time and energy, but given the occasion of my son's six-month birthday, I was really struck by just how much things have changed in six months.

More than that, things changed without my being fully aware of it. When I hear the back and forth on reform, I'm amazed at how much of the debate is based on the premise that if you don't smoke, don't drink, are generally good health and have some form of insurance, you become bulletproof. You're not. My wife falls under all of those headings and we still had reason to worry for months on end.

The bottom line is that no matter how bulletproof you think you are, there's always that chance that you'll become a different person overnight.

What will you do with your extra second?

In a quirk of modern timekeeping, we'll have a leap second this year - details here if you are stuck at work today and you're desperately looking for something to read - which obviously begs the question, "What can you actually do with one second?"

In all honesty, I can't think of many things you can do with that extra second. I think it would be pretty fun if the Times Square countdown stutter-stepped just to mess with people.

Five, four, three, two, one, one?

Aside from a sneeze or snapping your fingers, what really takes a second? Oh, you can also pronounce the word, "Mississippi" which, as we all know, is the United States' official designation of one second for touch football pass rushing and hide and go seek laws. Do not mess with the powerful hide and go seek lobby - they will end you.

Judging by the Facebook turnout, most people are ready for 2008 to be done with and for a variety of reasons that they're pretty coy about. I'm in between, as 2008 has been a pretty fun year for me, all told.

On the other hand, 2009 is on track to be a big year for me personally.

It should hopefully be the year my first kid is born and likely the year my wife and I buy our first home. I'm hoping it isn't also the year that the Great Depression comes back for seconds, that the earth doesn't spin into the sun or that the White Sox win the World Series again, but that's all small potatoes in my little universe.

I guess that's the funny thing I'm noticing as I get older. As my world perspective grows exponentially and I get a firmer grasp on all sorts of strange and wonderful things that interest me from history to auto repair to the inner workings of a pitched baseball, the things that actually matter most to me are shrinking down in the scope of the world's perspective.

It's comforting, really. While I would have given pretty much anything for one of my teams to win a championship at age 9 or 10, I'd trade most anything for a healthy baby, for a few extra years with my wife or for a little more time with a friend of mine who is battling cancer.

It's funny that while your awareness of the world around you expands, your interest in that fades and you begin to focus on the people and places within your reach. I'd like to think that it's not really a loss of innocence or passion, just a redirection of focus and a shuffling of personal priorities.

When I was a tiny little guy, my Dad would take me to the zoos and museums in Chicago and at that age, I couldn't fathom anything more valuable than the Field Museum. Sweet fancy Moses, it had dinosaurs. Dinosaurs that you could see any time you pleased if you owned the place.

I asked my dad once if he would trade me for the Field Museum and he said no way. At the time, I thought he was nuts, but he's become more and more sane with each passing year. Besides, memberships there are surprisingly affordable today.

So, I guess if there's anything to be done with that extra second tonight, it's probably best that it's coming around this year for me. I can use that extra second for one quick deep breath as I prepare to plunge headlong into a huge year for me and my growing family.

When I think about it in those terms, it may be the longest second of my life.

(Image from: 3Planesoft.com)

It's for your own good

Every few days, it dawns on me that I haven't posted in a long while. This is for your protection.

With an expectant wife, I've been trying to reign in the desire to assign meaning to every little thing because we're bringing a little person into the world in May.

Prices of peas rising because of fuel costs? Oh Lord, what kind of world are we bringing a child into?

See a worldwide tragedy? Oh my, this means so much more now that I'm going to be a dad.

I'm working through these issues, but in the meantime I'm doing my best to shelter everyone from endless posts about the changes in my little world.

All bets are off as of mid-May.

You've been warned and most web browsers make it very easy to delete bookmarks when I reach a point of total insufferability. Consider it my holiday gift to you.

Hold your horses

It's a weak explanation for the silence here, but things have taken on a life of their own at the tour company where I work. Despite my best attempts to alienate customers and never give more than 50 percent effort on any given day, I'm moving to a management role.

I know, I was hoping for zero responsibility for the entire summer, too.

Here, this should help to amuse you. Or you know, anger you. One of the two.

Also, this outstanding rant from Frankie. God, what a wonderful human being and he proves it by dropping this on unsuspecting readers of his blog:

Once again, the lesson for ordering pizza in a group is (1) meat, (2) cheese, and (3) shoot any dissenters. When it comes to ordering pizza, you need to put the sickle down like Soviet Russia.

We'll be back on line shortly.

Happy to be an adult today

It's been a busy summer so far. Between the wedding coming up this fall, the move a week or so before that and all of the usual chaos that comes with the summer workload at the shop, it's hard to keep track of the days flying by... save the gaps I see on the blogs where "I'll write tomorrow" turns into once a week or less.

In the midst of all of this, is the need to mature a little to make sure arrangements are made, rides are taken care of and deadlines are met to make sure we don't have flower-less or guest-less problems at the wedding.

While The Girl is taking care of all of this, I try to keep up to date enough that if I needed to, I could close out the hanging issues. After a week of project management, I just have little to know motivation to try and PM my life.

That's where The Girl comes in. While it will get its own post soon, her recent project of collecting all of my old, unpaid bills, student loans and other financial sinkholes has given me a great deal of peace as I no longer worry about when my accounts will be frozen or when my truck and television - the only real assets I have - would be taken and sold at auction.

Much like any other stressor in life, you don't realize how much something bothered you until it doesn't anymore.

It was a grown-up move to get things back on track, but like most grown-up things in life, it's pretty boring, costs you money and isn't something you can show off to your buddies - like say, a classic car or a boat.

Today, however, adulthood paid off when my old TV took a nose dive and needed to be replaced. With the cost of repairing a six year old TV equal to or greater than the price of replacing it with the same type, it was a pretty simple decision.

However, months of being a homebody, eating in, hanging out with the dog and not buying cars or boats leaves room in the budget for new LCD televisions. It also makes it easier to justify stepping into the high definition world and further cementing my status as an old guy who hangs around the house with his old lady.

You win this round, adulthood...

(Image from Anything-Direct.com)

Where's all the stupid?

Where'd the blog go?

Where'd the blog go?

It's all in my head these days. Unfortunately, as I type this my laptop sounds a lot like a lawnmower and shuts down in five minute cycles, so until Dell can ship out a new one, things will be a little sparse around here.

I'll plan on totally ripping off The Girl's work laptop, but that means I give up the TV, so you can see the entertainment pickle I'm in here, huh campers?

(Photo from Makezine.com)

The Happy Birthday Post

It was exactly a year ago today that this whole beautiful mess got up and running here at Siberia, Minnesota.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did start sifting through the old posts to throw together a Top 10 favorites post here, but I'm such a narcisistic bastard that it would have been a.) disgustingly self-indulgent and congratulatory and b.) about 37 to 45 items long, so I scrapped that idea pretty quickly.

Instead, I'll just share what I found by looking back with quiet reflection and the perspective that a year on the frozen plains gives you.

* There were a lot of hit and miss posts. Some were pretty well thought out and borderline worthwhile and then there were the others that were fueled by the thought that, "Crap, I haven't posted in almost a week." and just churned out to take up space.

Still, one of my favorites was only one line about how if I could invent an adhesive that stuck as well as a human booger, I'd be one rich mother.

* I think the baseball spinoff was a pretty good idea. It's been a lot more work, but kept it from taking over the site. That said, I still have a lot of crap thrown up there, too as well. More than here though. Much more than here.

* Somewhere along the way this summer, I realized how much I enjoyed writing again. That's when I think the overall tone changed from "LISTEN TO ME!" to just writing for myself. I think the writing got a lot better after that.

* While we're talking about tone, man, I had a really bad attitude about being here off the bat. I'm surprised I wasn't deported now. It is what it is, but it was getting pretty ugly for a while there.

* I can't believe how much I write about something on TV or that I heard about from TV. It's a lot - you can check it yourself... a lot.

* I think some of my favorites are the long posts about history. It should make sense that the posts that run long are the ones I'm most into (duh) but the ones with a historical base are the most fun.

* Finally, I'm pretty happy that I'm still doing this a year later. I'd thought when I went back to work that the blog would start collecting dust and eventually just die on the vine, but it's been nice to find time to vent, think or write. It's been pretty good for keeping my mind moving and giving me something to work on in my head during the day other than work.

Being able to kick an idea around all day and put it down in the evening has been a lot of fun.

(Photo from MichaelThompson.org)