Baby Stuff

We went on a hospital tour Sunday afternoon for the birthing wing at Hoag. I was thoroughly impressed! The first thing that I noticed was Hoag does not smell like a hospital. Most hospitals have the same hospital smell, but Hoag didn't smell like anything. The labor and delivery rooms were huge! And the recovery rooms were really nice, too! I didn't get a picture when we were there, but the room looked something like this:



Also, we were informed that the hospital offers a final meal right before the new parents leave. Again, I couldn't get a picture, but I imagine it will look something like this:




Also, last night we had our last child-preparedness class. It was nothing like the first two. It was nice and pleasent and there were no surprises. We just went over pushing techniques and breathing techniques and it was done. So now that we have gone through the training, we are now legally allowed to have this baby.

To All the Coffee Drinkers Out There Who Brew Their Own Cup....

....always always ALWAYS remember to check the filter!!!

For All of You Naysayers!!!

...that means you Michelle McMurtry and Rebecca Wakeling! Click here





Also, click here

Secularization of Knowledge

Until the modern age knowledge was largely produced, controlled, and distributed by priests, monks, and clerics. These people read, thought, and wrote for themselves and for the people. They absorbed and produced knowledge. Most people deferred to the priests, monks, and clerics when it came to knowledge. They accepted the teaching of the priests, monks, and clerics with little opposition. There was little independent thought by ordinary people. Whatever the priest, monk, or cleric said was accepted as true and there was no need to think that it was un-true because they spoke on behalf of God. The priests, monks, and clerics could say whatever they wanted and it would be accepted as God’s truth.

Today the part of the priest, monk, and cleric is played by the university professor and the expert. University professors and experts read, think, and write for themselves and for the people. University professors and experts absorb and produce knowledge. Most people today defer to the university professor and the expert when it comes to knowledge. The teachings of university professors and experts are accepted with little opposition. There is little independent thought by ordinary people. What university professors and experts say is accepted as true and there is no need to think that is in un-true because the professor and expert speak on behalf of Science. University professors and experts can say whatever they want and it will be accepted as Scientific truth.

I am saying this as I am struggling with a class where my world view is diametrically opposed to the professor’s world view. I am being told that what I believe is wrong and that I believe it only because I have been indoctrinated. If I do not believe the same thing that the professor believes then I am wrong because I am opposing ‘Science’. The professor is always right and any opposition has to be corrected to fall in line with the professor. This is the most serious confrontation I have ever had with a professor before, but the most fair. The professor is giving me full credit on my assignments while constantly telling me that my opinions are wrong. Hopefully the rest of the semester will be as fair as the beginning.

Check it!

Look what I made with my own two hands! I chopped, planed, sanded, and stained the wood and then assembled it in the form of a changing table with two drawers. Actually, I took it out of a box and followed the simple instructions that were written in (I think) retarded monkey. The next phase of the nursery is complete.

Man Cub Is Almost Here!!!

Today Michelle's really awesome work put on a really awesome surprise party/baby shower for Michelle and I. They had been planning this for a couple weeks. They called me and said that they were planning this party and inviting everyone from the office and some of the regional managers to surprise Michelle with a baby shower. I was expecting a few people with a small cake and some punch and I thought we would walk away with a couple cute onesies. I severely underestimated Michelle's work friends. There were about 30 people there and there was a huge spread pot luck style and there were more gifts than I would have imagined. We walked away with a car-load of new clothes, blankets, washclothes & towels, toys, and tons of other baby stuff. Michelle has made quite an impression on her co-workers and there was a strong outpouring of love and friendship for Michelle and our little growing family.






The fact that baby (who I will from now on refer to as man-cub) is coming in a very short time is sinking in. I feel like it was Sept. 1 and I blinked and all of a sudden its the 23. Where did those 22 days go?? I feel like I'm going to blink again and I am going to be holding him. I am 95% excited, more excited and expectant than I have ever been with the exception of my wedding day, and 5% nervous that I am going to not be a good father. There have been many people in my life who have shown me how to be a bad father and many people who have shown me how to be a good father. I hope and pray that I am able to be as good of a father as those good examples in my life. I can't wait for my son to get here!

Child-Birth Preparedness Class, Part Deux

Last night Michelle and I went to the second session of our child-birth preparedness class. I thought last week was bad! This week they showed everything that will happen while the mom births the child. They showed crowning, they showed the doctor pulling the baby out of the mother, they had a still picture of a baby in mid-birth with head and one shoulder outside of the mother. Now, I have seen this sort of thing before on the show Baby Story, but they were always kind enough to blur out the 'active' part of the image. There was no blurring in this video. And they didn't turn down the sound of the video, so you got to hear the mother's agony while the baby was half-way out.
I am an adult about this and I know that child-birth is a beautiful and magical miracle from God. I also know that I will feel a lot different when I am watching my wife give birth to my son. But for crying out loud, people! Give me a little warning when you are going to show something like that!

Atlas Shrugged

I'm about 150 pages into Atlas Shrugged. I like Ayn Rand a lot. I knew nothing about her until I picked up, on a whim, Anthem a couple weeks ago. Her writing style is one of the best I have ever read. Her characters are compelling and real, her dialogue is amazing, and her stories are epic in scope. After reading Anthem and being impressed, I picked up Atlas Shrugged and this is so much better. It is a commitment though - 1075 pages in very small font. I know nothing about the story - not even what its about, dont want to know anything. I am enjoying not having any idea whats going to happen. This is so much different than Lost. I always checked the spoilers for Lost and it has taken every amount of my willpower not to look online and find something about the book. So far it is one of the most entrancing stories I have ever read, and nothing has even really happened yet. I really like Ayn Rand as a writer.

Interesting Fact of the Day

Since 2005, the U.S. nickel has featured the word 'Liberty' in Thomas Jefferson's handwriting

Yarr, it be talk like a pirate day!!!

Ahoy, me hearties! Today be the day where ye scurvy dogs and landlubbers must talk like a pirate or ye be keelhauled and sent to Davy Jones' Locker. So swing the lead and batten down the hatches for it be talk like a pirate day, savvy?

Today I will be refered to as Cap'n Jim Blackbeard

Funny Palindromes

Just thought I'd share.


1. Golf? No sir, prefer prison flog.
2. Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog.
3. Flee to me, remote elf.
4. Draw pupil's lip upward.
5. Dammit, I'm Mad.
6. Campus motto: Bottoms up, Mac.
7. Too bad, I hid a boot.
8. Ten animals I slam in a net.
9. Straw? No, too stupid a fad, I put soot on warts.
10. Splat, I hit Alps.
11. Some men interpret nine memos.
12. Rise to vote, sir.
13. Do geese see God?
14. Lisa Bonet ate no basil
15. Live not on evil.

My Day Yesterday

Yesterday was one of the most interesting days I have had in a long time. I was on my way home from work around 3:00, just like every other day, and I round the corner on to my street and I notice that there are cars being stopped and turned around at a police blockade a few hundred feet down my street. When it is my turn to ask the police officer what's going on she tells me that they are investigating a "vicious crime scene." As she is telling me this I am looking down the street and notice several news vans, a couple fire engines, and tons of cop cars that appear to be on the street right in front of my house. So I ask if she can give me any more information as it looks like all the activity is happening right in front of my house. She said that all she can say is that they are investigating a vicious crime scene and that they are looking for bloody footprints. She then seems to have a spark of memory and she said "oh yeah, you can park and walk over there, we just dont want any cars over there." So, I went to the library and got myself a library card and checked out a couple books. When I got back, they were still investigating and it looked like a street fair with all the people who were walking around the street. At this point, I am freaking out because I am kind of an alarmist anyway, but I have a wife who is 8 months pregnant now and I want to make sure that she lives in a safe neighborhood. There is no payout at the end of this story because I don't know what happened. I heard someone (who was not a cop) say that a woman was stabbed to death in her apartment. This is the only official thing that I have been able to find about it so far.

The other interesting part of my day yesterday was Michelle and I went to our first birthing class last night. It was both extremely informative and extremely horrifying. There was a lot of talk of the mechanics of birth, and an especially large amount of talk about mucous plugs and effacing and other stuff like that. I still kind of don't believe that a human being, even if it is a baby, can get through a 10cm hole. And the instructor was so cavalier about the whole thing!!! She just casually went through the material like it was no big deal. This is a big deal people!!!!! I'm starting to hyperventilate...I need to start thinking about something else for a while...



**************UPDATE*****************
I just found this.

Global Warming News Item of the Day

click here

I don't know about you, but I am suddenly very worried about the consequences of global warming!

Something to think about

I just came across this quote from NT Wright in one of his lecture for the Veritas Forum.

"This is just an amazing book, this Bible. We Christians don’t actually take it nearly seriously enough. But how do we take it seriously?...Scripture is not designed to be authoritative in the sense of having a textbook on the shelf so that you can go and look up the right answer to your questions. There are lots of right answers to lots of questions, but that’s not how the authority of Scripture works. According to the Bible itself, God is the one with authority. At the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t say “All authority in Heaven and Earth is given to the books you chaps are going to go and write.” Jesus says “All authority in Heaven and Earth is given to me.” So if you take the authority of Scripture seriously, that must actually be a scrunched-down, shorthand way of saying the authority that God has given to Jesus is somehow mediated through scripture

I need to read my Bible more!

Interesting News Item of the Day

I you want to hear a nerdy, but interesting news story, click here. My good friend Matt said it best. There's really nothing else to say about it.
If you want a minute-by-minute update on whether the LHC has destroyed the world yet, click here.

In case you missed it....

...you really should check out this new show called Fringe. If you are as big of a Lost fan as me and need a fix to get you through the long break, or if you are just looking for a really cool new show, JJ Abrams has created this new show called Fringe. It is kind of like X-Files but done from the same guy as Lost. There's good news and there's bad news though. The good news first: the pilot came out strong and knocked it out of the park. The bad news: it was picked up by Fox, which is usually the death sentence for nerdy shows like this. Its worth checking out while it lasts.

Anthem

I just finished Anthem by Ayn Rand and I would recommend it to anyone who has 2 hours and wants to read a really good short story. The story is a dystopian view of the future in which something cataclysmic happened and all technology has been wiped out (the candle had to be reinvented). The story is told from the first person in the form of journal entries. In this future everyone lives in a world-wide collective and works with their brothers and for their brothers. Everyone has a specified duty and everything, from where people sleep to their names to how fast technology is developed, is controlled by the state. The main character is named Equality 7-2521 and everyone else has similar names. This is Rand’s ode to the self in which she deifies the self over the collective. Her views of communism come out strong in this story (she was born and raised in Russia before moving to America at the age of 21)

I won’t tell anything else about the story because I knew absolutely nothing about it going in and I thought it was an amazing story. It’s a short story (only 105 pages in the copy that I got) and it should only take about 1 ½ to 2 hours to read.

Nursery Stuff

Last night we stayed up pretty late getting the nursery prepped so we can paint it tomorrow morning. Michelle's dad is coming down to help me get it done. Hopefully between the two of us, we can get it knocked out in a couple hours. We decided to do a light baby blue for the walls and frame it with chocolate brown drapes and bedding. I'm starting to think that plain blue walls are going to be too boring, so I was thinking that this would be really cool!

2 Quotes That Made Me Laugh Out Loud

"An informed voter is a voter whose vote doesn't count any more than the vote of a complete idiot."
- Dave Barry quoting Ben Franklin

"The eyes are the groin of the head."
- Dwight from The Office explaining why he was going to shove a peice of sidewalk chalk into a security gaurd's eye

Blog Survey

Saw this somewhere, thought it was cool, wanted to share -

One book that changed my life: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, best book ever written, you have to read this book, it will change your life too

One book that I’ve read more than once: the Lord of the Rings trilogy

One book that I’d want on a desert island: cliché, but true - the Bible, there is no other book that I can imagine as the only book that I can read for the rest of my life

One book that made me laugh: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by the late, great Douglas Adams

One book that made me cry: I can’t think of any other one, so I’ll have to use it again…Tuesdays with Morrie

One book that scared the hell out of me: The Shining by Stephen King, I couldn't even finish it

One book I wish had been written: ‘Fides et Historia: How God Interacts with His Creation’. I am still looking for a book like this that describes how God acts within history to guide our historical narrative. If I can’t find, I’m just going to have to write it.

One book I wish had never been written: the entire Left Behind series...don’t even get me started...

Two books I’m currently reading: Witches and Neighbors by Robin Briggs and Your Baby’s First Year by the AAP

One book I've been meaning to read: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut




What about you?

This is what Michelle and I did last night

3 hours of baby CPR. It was good, and I feel like I got a lot out of it, but it was very repetitive. We did the CPR thing on the baby dolls somewhere around 35 thousand times. So, we can now save babies' lives! I feel like I've gained a new superpower! Next week we get to learn how to properly install a car seat.

Friday Night

Look where Michelle gets to go on Friday night. She is really, really excited about it! You should ask her about how excited she is! Oh yeah, I get to go to. Click here if you want to be jealous!

Lessons from the Hopi

I am taking an Anthropology of Religion class this semester. I know its not history, but my graduate advisor recommended that I take at least one cross-disciplinary class and this class looked easy enough to handle when the baby comes in November. Plus it works very well with developing my thesis topic (which I am already starting to formulate, but will save for another time). Last night I was reading about Hopi religion. Because of their religion, they are in constant commune with nature. They view their religion not as becoming, but as being. Here is a quote from the book: "Here we find people who do not so much seek communion with environing nature as find themselves in communion with it." This got me thinking, how much different would my walk with God be if I had this same mentality. What would it be like if I didn't see God as someone who I can go to on Sundays, or when I pray, or when its convenient for me to call on Him, but as someone who is always there living my life with me? What would it be like if I saw myself in constant commune with God? How much would my daily walk change? Would I do things differently? Would I get mad at the guy who cuts me off on the freeway? Would I take my relationship with God for granted?

I am so proud of my wife!!!

The other night, we were sitting on the couch watching some Star Trek, or as I like to call it "the Trek". The episode was 'Descent' and you might remember that episode featured Data with emotions, Data's brother Lore, and Borg with self-awareness. Well, at the point in the episode where the Borg appear, Michelle said, and I quote, "They can't be Borg! Borg don't move like that!" I started to tear up a little. After all these years, Michelle can now call herself a Trekkie!
I love you babe!