ben.parmeter

Well folks, I’m off to Asia once again.  This time it’s Korea and Taiwan, in a whirlwind business trip.  I’m on the plane writing this, killing some time on the 12 hour flight, so you may actually get this post later in the week when I get a spare moment to post to the website.  I may even be back in the states by the time you are reading this.   A little blog post latency.    Let’s get on with it.

I’m away from my girls for the first time since Claire was born, which is a big milestone in itself.  I underestimated how much it would tug at the heartstrings to leave Suzy and Claire behind for this relatively short jaunt to Asia.  As I kissed Suzy and Claire goodbye, I held back the tears and tried to steady my voice as I told them I loved them and that I would be back in a week.  Just a few weeks earlier, I didn’t quite think I’d be this emotional, but as the moment drew near I thought about all of the missed evenings with Claire and dinners with Suzy.  And don’t tell Suzy this, but I even will miss changing diapers in the middle of the night.   Sigh.  I do love my girls so much.  To make matters worse, all of the movies on the flight over to Korea were “themed” tear-jerkers.  Great.  Stupidly, I sat and watched these movies, descending further into my pit of despair.

Before leaving the house for the airport, Suzy, Claire and I did some last minute testing of Skype.  I was unsure about the microphone setup with Linux, and so I attempted to switch to Suzy’s laptop instead.  I’m not sure why I ever doubted setting it up on Linux, because it seems to be working just fine, whereas on her Windows XP laptop we can’t seem to get the video working correctly.  Chalk one up to Ubuntu.  The real test will come when we finally are able to get a real video-call going.  Unfortunately, they’ll either have to be super-late calls (after midnight here), to catch her early in the morning.  Or they’ll have to be early morning for me (late afternoon for Suzy).  I still find it pretty darned amazing that we will be able to see each other and talk in real time all the way on the other side of the globe (just about).  It’ll be nice to start the day here with a little reminder of home to take the edge off .

My live view of Suzy and Claire from Asia.

UPDATE: And yes, I posted this after returning from the continent.  Too busy to actually post in Asia…

I tend to post updates here on this blog in a flurry, when I have a free moment to steal away from the madness.  When I’m not working, I’m here at home, either working (sadly) or bouncing Claire or taking care of a random chore while Suzy bounces Claire.  Well, today, I grabbed a few moments to finish posting pictures from Christmas in Oregon in 2009.  Dang.  That only took a month.

 

Yes, yes, I know.  I’ve been busy, OK?  Forgive me?  Ok, thanks for letting me off the hook this time.  I managed to squeeze some blog time into weekend amongst bouncing with Claire, doing some home improvement, cleaning the house, and doing catch-up California Christmas.  At any rate, I’m still sorting through all of the Oregon photos.  But just to give you a taste, I’ve uploaded some photos into a gallery which I will categorize as mid-December, pre-Christmas photos.  As written about by my older(wiser) sister, the holidays were filled with “Awesome Times, and Awesome People”.  More about that later.  On to the photos…

 

It’s really quite fortunate that we love our offspring so much, because otherwise I’m not sure how we could put up with the sleepless nights.  I think it puts us into a state of sleep deprivation euphoria that fuels our endless dedication to feeding, diapering, and calming our newborns.  Suzy is grabbing some Z’s when Claire sleeps – and adjusting to the new schedule.   In fact, they’re napping together right now.  I felt it was a great time to quickly blog and to post some more photos of my girls.  So here they are:

 

Claire Marie Parmeter was born this morning at 8:46AM.  She’s a healthy 7 lbs, 7.8 ounces, and 19.75 inches long.  And we love every bit of her.  Already being adorable.  Here are some pictures for everyone out there.  More photos to come.

 

We’re so excited! We think that the day may finally be here! Claire will hopefully be making her début into the world soon and we’d like you to share in the moment(s). As mentioned in previous posts, I’ll be live-blogging the experience via Twitter here. So what are you waiting for? Get on over to twitter and read my blow-by-blow, sportscaster-like, coverage of the labor and delivery of our little girl. Just click here.

For the uninitiated, you may not need a Twitter account to read my twitter-feed, but it’s not a bad idea to sign up anyway. You don’t want to be left behind in the technical dust. When reading my feed (http://twitter.com/nebhead) you may want to refresh the page every so often to get the latest updates (on a PC press “F5″, on a Mac press “command+r”).

Away we go!

One might think that over the last month or so, nothing has happened of note in my life.  But alas, that is not the case.  For some reason, after sitting down in front of the keyboard, I’ve been struck with a terrible case of the writers block.  I just haven’t been motivated to write about things lately.  So instead of writing a well thought out post, chronicling the goings-on, I’m going to make a list of random things I’ve been up to with photos.  Ben’s month in lists…

Things I’ve been doing lately:

• Celebrated Suzy’s Birthday, Twice (Once at Ruby Tuesday – Shameful, Once at The Melting Pot – Delicious)
• Brewed an Oatmeal Stout for annual competition with one of my co-workers
• Purchased a PlayStation 3 (Mostly for Blu-Ray support, but also for games and media center)
• Got the Santa Fe fixed
• Read “Happiest baby on the Block”
• Visited like-minded friends on the Central Coast of California, made friends with their dog Parker

• Saw this drooling bird on the pier at the beach

• Went to a good old fashioned Melodrama (my first time… and a great experience)
• Visited Taipei, Taiwan for work

• Read “Baby Wise”
• Ate great Asian food in Taipei, Taiwan
• Worked in Taipei, Taiwan
• Took pictures in bathrooms in Taipei, Taiwan (“Keeping a Clean and Pleasant Environment Makes Everyone Delighted Thank You”)

• Played Beatles RockBand (Thanks Chris!)
• Traveled to Oregon for work, visited my parents
• Met Nico Edan Ferguson for the very first time.

• Said goodbye to my long time friends Pat & Cynthia – Have a great time in Taiwan my friends… see you in two years!
• Baby Shower plus BBQ with the family in Stockton
• Obtained a flash for my fancy camera – subsequently super impressed with results
• Took second place at the Oktoberfest for our Oatmeal Stout (See Above)

• Brewed Scottish Ale from a kit (I know… I was too lazy to do my own all-grain recipe)
• Toyed with the idea of brewing a blueberry wheat beer for my second keg
• Spent time with the fellas at one of my best buds houses while Suzy had another baby shower in Sacramento – More Rock Band
• Worked A Bunch

And that folks, is just a tiny portion, of the things that I’ve been up to lately.  More to come…

I’ve finally posted the video in all it’s glorious distorted choppiness.  And I kept the audio, because let’s face it, YouTube is just going to make me take down any copyrighted music content.   It’s embedded below, or you can go straight to the YouTube here.

This weekend, we went back to the same Ultrasound clinic that we went to several weeks back, and splurged a little because we just can’t wait to see our little daughter’s face.  Thanks to some serious mathematics, processing power, and of course pure awesome physics, we can take a glimpse under our skin with a simple sound wave.  (If you seriously want to know more about the real-time rendering of the 3-D images for ultra sound, take a gander at this website.  Prepare to get your geek on.  You’ve been warned.)

I have to say I never expected the kind of emotional response that this experience elicited from me.  It’s as if I got to meet my daughter for the first time.  And I’ll be darned if that didn’t bring a tear to my eye.  I may be a little biased, but even looking at these distorted yellow images, I think she’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen.

Without further delay, click here, to go straight to the gallery.

Personally, I think she is a spitting image of Suzy.  Her eyes and nose for sure.  Suzy seems to think she resembles me from the lower lip down.  You be the judge:

I’ll post the video’s later when I can get them compressed and posted to YouTube.  Instead of the lullaby’s that were recorded with the original, I’m thinking of re-dubbing it (like a Kung-Fu movie).  I’ll taking requests for potential tunes.

Until next time, I love you all.

It’s official, I am back on the bleeding edge of the internet.  Yes indeed.  I have officially signed up for a twitter account.  You’ve been hearing about it for a while.  Everyone is doing it… apparently.  Tweeting.  I’ve resisted for a good long time.  But I’ve finally succumb to the big’ol internet and it’s new-fangled technology.

I have a plan though, so it’s not without good reason that I have signed up.  You see, I have it in the plan to ‘Live-Blog’ the birth of my child.  Come November, prior to Suzy going into labor, I plan to start the countdown on this very blog.  And when we get to the actual event, the day (or days) of actual labor, I really want to post real-time updates replete with pictures to the internet so that friends and family can share in the experience from afar.

Here comes the technical rub.  I’ve looked into the ‘live-blogging’ plug-ins for WordPress (the software that this blog runs on) and I was a bit overwhelmed with the complexity that I’d face setting up such a system.  And, with people re-loading the page frequently, the site might actually buckle under the bandwidth pressure (that might be an overstatement, but it’s possible!).  So instead, I’ve come up with another third-party and entirely free solution.  Twitter.

Twitter allows me to update the world, very easily, in real-time, from my iphone in chunks of 140 characters or less.  It allows me to post pictures directly from my iPhone.  It’s nearly perfect for my plans.  It’s not quite as fancy as the Live-Blogging that Gizmodo or Engadget does for big tech announcements (like WWDC).   But it’ll do the trick.

So folks, come November, when we hit the big day, look for my link to twitter where I will be giving the blow-by-blow updates of what’s going on in our delivery room.  I am soooo bleeding edge.