The color of infinity inside an empty glass

The plan for today was to get up, try to get out and shop, do laundry, make lunches and at least WATCH the superbowl, if not go to a party.

( But life has a way of laughing at plans )

And now, here I am, half watching the superbowl, but mostly here, posting about a very traumatizing day that may end up being one of the best days of my life...

I still think the kid should be named Murphy... It feels.. appropriate...

I can't remember who reminded me. If it was K's family or my father or what, but someone asks me sometime last month "Have you tried a test run to the hospital yet?"

Test Run? Whoops!

Truthfully, I hadn't given it much (read: any) thought. I think the plan had always been to pull the GPS out and find my way, but it was a good idea. And K agreed. So we decided we'd pick a weekend and just do it.

That weekend was this last weekend, specifically two days ago.

So we get up early enough to be out the door by 9:30. The weather says there's danger of some winter weather, with a couple of inches of snow, and that didn't sound so bad and looking outside, it looked OK, a little bit of snow falling, but nothing huge.

So we start driving. K tunes out and listens to one of her tracks (we assumed that when we made the real drive, it would just be me and the GPS, that K would be.. somewhat indisposed). So I turn the GPS on, ask it to get us to the hospital (K had made it a favorite recently) and off we go.

As we drive, the snow starts coming down harder. By now, I'm on the Toll Road going at high speed, but the driving seems OK.

The hospital itself isn't too far away, 15 minutes or so, a drive down the toll road to the beltway to 650. I'm certain I've been here before, probably during the Gall Bladder thing.

As we hit the beltway, visibility has gone to almost nothing. This is no longer a fun ride. We get there no problem, but as we approach the hospital, my car begins to lose traction. Enough to slide around a bit, but not out of control, thank god. So we turn around, try to get to the beltway, see the exit is blocked (from one direction only. No clue why that is.), u-turn and head back home in whiteout conditions.

By the time we pull into the parking lot, we were sorely glad to be home. I'd slipped and slid enough for one day. (I miss my old Mercury on days like Saturday. It had crap gas mileage, but it never slid.)

That said, if we can get to the hospital in weather like that, we can get through in ANYTHING!

I keep meaning to post, but I'm never really sure WHAT to say.

Life is.. finding it's groove, but we're not exactly doing much, just getting through.

K is veryveryvery pregnant now. Chances are, if you're reading this, you're on her filter and you know what's going on with her, the aches, the pains, the sleeplessness. I think we're both at a stage where we're ready for the kid to pop out already and we can get on with our lives.

Things have been slow. We both are working on limited amount of spoons. There's alot to do and we'll get it done, though indubitably, some of it will be last minute.

The new office is settling down and I'm finding a new groove here as well. It's different than the old place, better in some ways. I'm enjoying not driving and find the commute taking an hour doesn't really bother me cause, honestly, there were plenty of days it took an hour anywyas, and then I had the stress of dealing with traffic.

My computer was returned to me a week or so ago, with one slight issue. We replaced the hard drives, both of them, with a single hard drive. What that meant is that I retained my music and lost all of my ratings. For over 10,000 songs. Gah.
So I'm rerating my stuff. Again. Not a project I was really looking to do, but.. oh well.

Still playing Guild Wars. Two or three times a week. Maybe not as much as I'd truly like, but as much as I truly can, at the moment. I'm still moving forward in the game, and that's important to me. All sorts of drama going down with the guild I joined in GW, but none of it has to do with me and I'd rather ignore it and keep playing.

Birthing Classes seem to be going positively. It definitely seems to be working for K, which is the important part.
I'm learning alot of stuff. Stuff I needed to know. Not only what K wants (and doesn't want), but also.. what my roll in the whole day is going to be. That is precisely what I needed. Knowing my roll and the expectations of me, I feel alot more confident and ready for the big day.
And that's without the script that K's class wants me to read to help me feel calm and confident. Calm isn't normal for me, but confident is, if I know what to do.

And that's what's going on over here, my quick life update.

It's been quite a year, both personally and across the world.

I've been doing these "Year in Review" posts for years. And this year is no different. So.. for mostly myself (and anyone else who cares)

( What I want to remember about 2009: The Year in Review )

I got a call yesterday from my friend Kallie from CC. The moment she called, I knew she was going to give me bad news. She'd already contacted me a day or two ago to let me know that things were looking bleak for our friend Kim. I knew, as I answered the phone, that they had...

I met Kim back in early 2007, at the height of my involvement with Calorie Count. As I recall, I had no idea who she was until she asked to join us at one of our early CC get togethers in DC. She must have thought we were OK since she started hanging out in the Chat often and became a staple of the Chat and the local Washington DC CC community. She was always in Chat, made it to most meetups and I got to know her very well.

Things turned bad this year, though, when she found out that she had cancer. She went into treatment at John Hopkins but the news was never very good and never really got a whole lot better. As things steadily progressed downwards her family and she realized that she couldn't keep living alone here in DC, so she moved down a couple months back to Atlanta.

The last I physically saw Kim was a couple months ago just before she moved. We hung out at Bertucci's for a while, talked for a long long time. She gave K and I a present, a stuffed snoopie to give to the n00b, and then she left and the rest of us went to mini-golf..

And now, as of December 23rd, 3 years after my mom passed (12/23 is clearly a Cursed Day...), Kim is finally out of pain...

I understand she was doing well Nonday, cheering on the Redskins, not doing so well Tuesday and then Wednesday...

She was too young. This was too fast. There is not a shred of this that is fair or right.

*sigh*

Rest in Peace, Kim. You are missed.

On Friday, the word came down.. a winter snow storm was a-coming and it was gonna get ugly. My wife and I agreed that we'd scrap our plans for Saturday and just relax and stay inside. But before that, we needed to get some things.

( In which I discuss the trevails of the Snow Storm of '09 )

So my wife got me the newest Super Mario Bros. for Wii. It was quite a hassle to get since the stores can't seem to keep it on the shelves.

And I can tell why. Playing through World 1-1, I can tell why. If you ever played Super Mario Bros. or, more importantly, the much better Super Mario 3, you'll recognize what's going on immediately. Seriously, you'll be teleported back to 1988 when you and your siblings were all around the NES trying to beat the Koops Family.

The New Super Mario Bros for Wii is a side scroller with some 3-D elements in it, but gameplay seems to be all 2-D, You'll jump, walk and slide your way around the board meeting all-too-familiar enemies along the way and listening to some all-too-familiar music as you play.

As you jump and shoot your way through the board, bounding on goombas and koopas, you'll also be amused as hell as the creatures dance to the music. I'm not kidding! The cheeps will turn upside down to the music. Koopas and Goombas stop and do a small step. It's cute as hell!

After clearing World 1-3, you hear bad news. The Toads have been shroomnapped and placed in ? blocks around the board. To rescue them, you have to find Toad (easy, toad talks nonstop and goes "Help me!" when you're near him. You can't miss him.", then carry him to the exit (that part is hard, because you have to hold a button the whole time to keep carrying him instead of throwing him.) If you succesfully get Toad out, you'll get a power-up for your troubles.

There's also Toad houses dotted around the board. It seems like rescuing toads opens up these toad houses for business. Inside, you get a chance to win power-ups and 1-ups.

Difficulty wise, it's typical Mario Fare. You need decent hand-eye coordination. If you got it, this game is totally playable. If you struggle, well.. experience helps. :)

Before ending the review, I got a chance to play multiplayer yesterday. Where up to four characters can play the same board together. If you aren't communicating well, it's pure chaos with players jumping all over each other and kicking koopas towards each other and other craziness. It's absolute insanity and can easily lead to the sudden unexpected death of a player. I imagine, if you DO communicate well, however, it can lead to a more rapid clearing of a board and finding all the treasures inside. But that didn't happen for us.

If you loved Super Mario Bros. 3 and have the money, I highly suggest this game. :) If you have a family, I highly suggest this game. :)

I saw 2012 this last weekend. It was a baaaad movie. Absolutely awful. The effects were stunning and it WAS kinda cool to watch the earth be destroyed, but the plot had more holes than swiss cheese.

But it got the old creative juices flowing.

I love end of the world movies. They're usually hokey as heck, but they're amusing.

If I were to ever direct such a movie, I'd start it thusly...

( Silliness )

And there's, like, a bit of real science in there too! Maybe not a WHOLE lot, but some.

For the record, I don't think anyone's ever studied the affects that an asteroid hitting the earth would have on global warming. But dust traps heat. So I imagine things would get bad much much quicker.

OK, maybe not. But I'm not changing my disaster movie just cause the science says I'm wrong!

This is kinda meaningless, in that it has little to no meaning to anyone but me, but it was kinda interesting to do anyways. :)( The List )

The results aren't much of a surprise. Favorite artist is.. TMBG, followed closely by Weird Al (who hit his peak in the 80s and the 90s). BnL was hit and miss (for every good album they had, the next one never really worked well..), as was Fruvous.

Looks like 1992 and 2001 were REALLY good years for music.

It's no shock that since I started collecting CDs back around 1992, that's when things start getting continuous.
Except for 2005.
.. there's a few decent songs from 2005, The Caesars "Jerk it Out", OK Go's "Here we go again", but nothing really stuck as far as great albums. *shrug*

Meaningless, but interesting anyways. :)