ben.parmeter

…leads to me blogging more than usual.  It’s the dreaded annual review time at work and I’m overwhelmed with evaluations, ranking, rating, meetings, etc.  All of this is piled on top of my regular job which has increased in workload considerably this year.  The desire to goof off, surf the internet or play with my daughter is so much more appealing.  I think that’s why this particular picture hit home for me.  Also, it’s hilarious.  I mean, dinosaurs, jets and swimsuit models?!  Comedy gold.

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:

I just had to share this adorable photo of Claire that Suzy took with her iPhone and I subsequently edited with my iPhone. So cute!

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!

Well, it certainly is; until tomorrow when a crew of tree removal experts descend upon my yard to turn that tree into a heap of firewood.  That’s revenge for ya!  So sit back, and let me tell you a little story about our Tuesday evening at home.  I suppose I should start from the beginning.

Tuesday was a particularly unseasonably windy and rainy day.  The remnants of the so called “super-typhoon” squarely walloped the northern part of California with 35mph winds, gusting up to 50mph.   Most of the morning was relatively un-eventful.  Suzy had left work at lunch time, because they were repainting her office.  The fumes were starting to really bother her, and that combined with the fact that she is trying her best to not breathe in any fetus-unfriendly toxins, she headed home.   Not too long after she got home, she called me at work to let me know that there was about a 20 foot section of branch that had fallen from one of the trees in our backyard, onto the neighbors fence.  She braved the wind and the rain in the backyard to investigate and found that the fence was actually damaged – and could sustain more damage if we didn’t get this off soon.

Needless to say, I quickly drove home to investigate myself.  I dropped an e-mail to my team, letting them know I’d be working remotely and dashed home.  When I got home, I confirmed the 20 foot branch leaning up against the fence.  Much bigger than I expected, and definitely not something I could move with sheer man-power.  It was big.  Using my mastery of physics, I acquired a rope from the garage and tied it to the highest point I could reach.  Meanwhile, the rain and winds were still raging, and looking up at the looming trees, I was a bit afraid that they would start to jettison more branches this size onto me.  But I carried on.  Having fixed the rope to the branch above the mid way point, I pulled as hard as I could and managed to get the tree off the fence and back into our yard.  A job well done.  And I fully intended to start cutting that branch into smaller sections, but Suzy convinced me that it wasn’t wise to do that now, so I packed up my things and headed inside.

I was pretty well soaked from the pelting rain, so I put on some fresh clothes and went back into the living room to sit on the couch and enjoy the sounds of the typhoon outside.  And this was when we heard one of the most gut wrenching sounds a person can hear.  Crrraaaaaaccckkkkk, swoooooooshhh, THUD!!!  Suzy and I were frozen in place, staring in horrified silence.  The large 50 foot tree closest to our house had just snapped at the base and fallen parallel to our house, filling our backyard completely with tree.

Seemingly, the tree had missed the house, or so we thought.  But as we got to the rear sliding door, we could see that the eaves of the house were damaged.  It was Armageddon back there.  My gas grill was squashed and there were branches and leaves everywhere.  Amazingly, it seemed to have fallen squarely within the confines of my yard, grazing the house ever so slightly.  We stood, staring at the mess before us for a few minutes discussing how lucky we were and how I was just out in the backyard and that could have been me squashed underneath that giant tree.

As we turned around, Suzy noticed one of the vent registers had partially popped out of the ceiling… and leaves and bark appeared to be coming out of the hole.  And then, water started to drip from the vent.  We quickly examined the rest of the ceiling in the back room.  We’d eventually discover the leak was spreading across the room to a light fixture and to seam in the dry-wall.

Suzy also discovered, when going into the master bathroom that a branch had breached the dry-wall and was sticking out out over the sink.  Strangely enough, no water was leaking in from this portion of the ceiling.

And so I braved the wind and the rain one more time to climb up onto the roof (never do this in a storm, I know), and attempted to assess the damage.  Using the pruning saw that I got from my parents in law last winter, I started to hack away at the branches to try to get closer to the roof puncture.  My neighbor, an extremely kind man indeed, ventured up onto the roof with me with a small hand saw.  Together managed to wrap a tarp around the branch and the puncture, hoping to stem the torrential flood of water coming into the roof.  After a good amount of time we decided it just wasn’t safe to be up there any longer and we headed back indoors.

After calling my insurance company, they got me in touch with an emergency contractor who was able to come out to my house in the same evening, saw back the branches on the roof, remove the giant branch protruding into the house and seal up the hole with plywood and plastic.  This would allow us to limp through the remainder of the storm and stop the water damage from getting any worse than it was.

Needless to say, we were both pretty shaken up by the whole event.  That night, we chose not to sleep in the bedroom, for fear that the tree might somehow shift in the wind, dislodge and roll into the house again.  And if that happened, we didn’t want to be anywhere near it.  So we slept on the couches in the living room that night, waking at every little sound.  Luckily, the weather gave us a break, the wind calmed down and the rain slowed to a trickle that very night.

Without further delay, here are some pictures that capture the moment both right after it occured and the next day.  Enjoy.

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.