fine whine

... or rather, lack of content.

First, let me be the last to wish everybody a Happy New Year 2007*. I never intended to let the entirety of January pass without writing anything at all, but the fact that I'm actually writing this on February second would show that exactly that has happened.

I didn't have any drafts started for the month, at least not in my software.

This is not to say that nothing interesting has happened; only that writing about it isn't atop my to-do list anymore. Coincidentally, neither is beating up the denizens of Azeroth - I'm almost completely weaned from the World of Warcraft, too.

But enough about things virtual and insignificant.

It's been a big month for our daughter, too. Just last week Natalya started attending daily day care, and Jessica's gone back to work. Our day-to-day routines continue to evolve - I now wake up more than twenty minutes before I leave as it is my responsibility to feed (and sometimes re-clothe) Natalya. I think I'm going to assemble a DVD or two of TV episodes to watch in the morning as I feed her, since my initial experiments into holding a baby, a bottle, and a Playstation 2 controller have been less than successful.

I haven't added many new photos of her to my gallery recently, and in fact haven't taken as many either. But I do have a few to upload, and have no intentions of stopping taking pictures anytime soon.

So then you ask, other than not taking pictures of my daughter, what have I been doing these last several weeks?

At work I've been spending a considerable chunk of my time doing workshops that are not exactly in the scope of my day-to-day responsibilities. My day-to-day responsibilities have not exactly shrunken to accomodate these added demands, however, and as such have had some extra workload issues.

As such, I've been borrowing a laptop at night. A laptop which, I have discovered, gets better wireless reception than any of the ones I've tried before in my house. In fact I am able to piggyback onto the wireless network of one of my neighbors across the street, as long as I stick to the front rooms of our house, particularly near the windows. I've entertained the notion of trying to figure out exactly which house houses the router to which I connect, but haven't tried very hard so far. I have, however, finally seen the first season of Arrested development and the first two of NBC's The Office, and I must say, they're quite funny.

Of course both shows would be perfect feeding-time entertainment, but this idea has only occurred to me after I've already watched them, before I was consistently feeding Natalya every morning. I suppose I could always re-watch them, of course.

As ever, though, watching TV shows is the merest fraction of the time my TV is on; I'm watching movies at pretty much my usual pace. Unusual, however, are the movies themselves: I've begun watching Bollywood movies. Though I haven't made it through ten of them, I (arbitrarily) decided to watch 50 Hindi movies by 2008, though I may need to revise that goal to 'movies from India' to better cover the non-Bollywood films (i.e. ones not in Hindi). Even from the few I've seen I have much about them to write, and hope to get around to doing that soon, since I've been bouncing the ideas around in my head for quite some time.

At the risk of promising almost nothing and still failing, I'm not going to make any promises or resolutions about posting more.

And any rumors that this post is timed to match yet another threadless sale are, well, nonexistent until now, and entirely untrue. They are, in fact, doing another sale, however this time around to save $5 per shirt you need to buy two of the same, for you and ostensibly for your sweetheart. This is also your chance to stock up on duplicates, I suppose.

Whenever Jessica and I inadvertantly wear the same color shirt I'm tempted to change clothes - I'm not sure I'd be interested in wearing the same (trendy, hipster approved) shirt as her. So it goes.

* Or may I be one of the first to wish a Happy New Year of the Boar? Chinese New Year is rapidly approaching - it won't be 4704 much longer!

I can't resist it any longer. Threadless has been running a $10 sale for almost the entire last month, and it's over Thursday.

I'm considering buying only one this time around: The downside of genetic engineering.

Other notable designs:

• The Communist Party
• Funkalicious
• No Repeats!
• Mechanical Mayhem
• Calling Home
• Memories, Sweet Memories
• The War Against Work
• THIS Is How The World Ends

But enough about shirts*.

December is not the brightest month, generally. If I put any stock in all of the newly discovered 'disorders' (or owned stock in the companies that make drugs to treat them) I self-diagnose myself with a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder, whereby as the seasons get colder I'm less of my warm self.

Except that that's pretty much what happens to most people, to some degree. The days are shorter and darkness falls earlier and earlier; people don't leave their warm abodes as often, fostering cabin fever, and then there's always the incessant Christmas music that is inescapable from Halloween on.

Every year I've been posting to this site I've posted less and less during the month of December. This year I've got even more of an excuse: sleep deprivation.

Which brings me to the baby. She's been doing pretty well - we've got her on something of a normal schedule at night, at least, whereby she sleeps from about 11 until 5 in the morning. Unfortunately in order to get her to do this we need to keep her from getting too much sleep during the daytime - and by 'we' I mean Jessica during the day, and me after dark. Some nights she's okay with the plan, but other times she cries and cries, until I can find the one magic fix, which is never the same night to night. Sometimes she just wants to lay on the floor or the table, other nights she wants to be rocked in the rocker, some nights I walk with her on the treadmill for half an hour, and sometimes she calms down in the swing. It's never the same thing one night to the next, but I guess that's just how babies are.

I have set up a photo gallery of sorts, and you can look at it by clicking on the '/photos' link above. At some later date I'll post more information about where the pictures are and how you can get better copies of them, for printing and such, but at the rate I've been writing lately that won't happen until February.

Until then, well, happy holidays and stuff.

* The best way to shop is the stock chart. The usual disclaimers apply: All of the Threadless links, except the one in this sentence, contain affiliate information for me through which I get store credit if you buy a shirt. Or lots of shirts. They make great gifts, you know!

It's that time again - Threadless is throwing another ten dollar tee-shirt sale. As usual that link and this one are for my own personal gain, but hey, you're going to buy the shirts anyway, right?

For me, right? Men's large.

August is New Music Month, at least for me. Over the last few weeks I've amassed what I hope will prove to be a fairly decent collection of new music. Now I just need to listen to it.

First of all, I joined eMusic.com with a 100-song free trial (email me and I'll give you the details - the regular one is only 25 songs). I was very methodical in my picks, making sure to have as close to that 100-song limit chosen before downloading a single track. eMusic gets a bad rap for not having many mainstream artists, but I was more than able to find albums I wanted and some that sounded intriguing*.

Before I mention the new artists I found, I was exceptionally pleased to see new releases from two groups I really like:

• Comments of the inner chorus by Tunng. I was turned onto Tunng by an offhanded Warren Ellis blog mention, and have been hooked ever since, going as far as to track down their album as an English import. I didn't pay very much for it on eBay, but now I see that eMusic has it, as well as this new album I'd not known they'd released. Their music isn't for everybody, but I enjoy it thoroughly.
• Last train to Mashville by A3. Well before gaining widespread popularity (and one-hit-wonderness) for the theme song to The Sopranos, A3 found their way into my collection from a discount bin. On their debut album they called their music "country acid house" and even that isn't broad enough a definition. Over the years they've put out a number of decent albums (including second-most-recent Power in the blood, available on the site though it is somewhat disappointing) but this one is a stripped-down, acoustic version of many of their hits, including a cover of John Prine's "Speed of the sound of loneliness" that sounds like a fair-to-middling country song they way they do it, but the fun's in knowing how they'd done it before. At least, for me.
• Buildings and grounds by Papas fritas. Back in the days when I lived within broadcast distance of WLUW I listened to a lot of what most people would call "college radio" or perhaps "indie" while I drove to work and back. I'd hear something I'd like and write it down, hoping to look it up and hunt it down later. Many songs and groups I was able to find (for example, Belle and Sebastian) but many eluded me, including the song The way you walk by Papas fritas, which they would play at least once a week, seemingly to taunt me. I never saw the album on the shelves at the libraries, or used or new music stores, and I wasn't willing to shell out the cash to buy the rest of the disc, tracks-unheard. But now I have it, and access to their entire discography, thanks to eMusic. Now I only need to figure out if I still like their songs, I suppose.
• Just like the fambly cat by Grandaddy. Grandaddy's another indie radio darling, though one that the libraries seem to buy. Here again is a new release I hadn't know about, and I doubt the library will pick it up anytime soon, my requests notwithstanding.

I didn't just pick up music from groups I recognized, but I'll write about the other tracks I downloaded once I've given them a few more spins.

* Pun intended.

In college I took a geography class taught by the then-editor of Goode's World Atlas, John Hudson. Though a good teacher, he was also pragmatic and understood that, to reach more than just the interested third of his students (and in particular, the ones sitting up in the balcony tossing back a few cold ones), he'd need to spike his slideshows with interesting and funny slides. This he did, showing us amusing sights and signs from all over the continent, all the while attempting to teach us all about the geography of North America.

While I remember less than I should of the material (to this day I can't recall where durum is grown, and if it is in fact used in the making noodles or something else) I do remember a few of the photos. I'm pretty sure he didn't have this one, for when we discussed the midwest, but it would've been among his collection. If you click on the photo above* you'll see why I took the shot.

Or you can look here:

It truly boggles the mind, this "Nameless Creek". It's something of a logical fallacy, along the lines of "This statement is false" or some such.

* The photos above are hosted by Zooomr, and I have posted them because they are giving free "pro" accounts, with additional privileges I do not know, to bloggers and people like me. Thanks Andy for the heads up. I'm a pathological joiner of anything free, so it was a given I'd try this site out. Can it compete with flickr? Only time will tell.

Well, that was quick. Anybody who missed out on the last Threadless sale has another chance already, since they're doing it again*. Better yet, thanks to Preshrunk, you can get an additional $3.00 off your order with this code: "SUPER TEES". I have verified this code works.

As usual, I recommend using the stock chart for the sizes you wear.

This time around I'm tempted to buy one of a few shirts:

• Landline's Revenge by Keith Carter
• Piece of meat by Ross Zietz
• Moby was a consumer by Jim Slatton

Others may be tempted by:

• the popular Mourning girl by Ben Garraud
• the cute Bigfoot & Friends by Josh Carpenter
• the infamous Blog "by" Illias Karim

Of course they have many more great shirts, at least until they run out.

* Note that the link contains a secret tracking code for me, so that if you order, I get some small pittance of credit. Thanks again to all who have used my link, and thanks to anyone else who does so this week.