Of course, as with most timing in our lives, this job came just a tad prematurely. In another 3 months it would have been a complete nobrainer. As it stands, we… well, she… is in the middle of teaching our little girl about the wonders of sleeping for hours on end at nighttime. This is a wonder that we used to both enjoy and would like to get back to enjoying. Unfortunately, Kayleigh doesn’t completely understand this yet, thus my stress levels jump through the roof every time I hear her little grunts or sighs come over the monitor.

But that’s nighttime parenting. Living in fear that your baby will start fussing when you want them to sleep. Oh, and when they aren’t fussing? You poke and prod them until they do to make sure they’re alright. It’s brilliant! Much like the arguments I have with Kayleigh when she is over tired: “But honey, you’re sleepy. You need sleep. We want you to sleep. If you just go to sleep, everybody, including you, will be happy. Why won’t you just go to sleep?”

It’s like they say, there’s just no reasoning with kids. Especially when they lack any kind of verbal skills beyond the occasional “Enh!” Personally I think she really does understand these debates I have with her. Something in the way she smiles after we give up trying to get her to nap because she insists on crying the instant her head touches the mattress. That smile almost looks like a smirk, like she’s about to wink at me over The Woman’s shoulder to make sure I know that she fooled us again.

And so we come back to the idea of teaching her how to sleep. Training, really. Training? What is she, a dog? Well, we do clean up her poop, try to get her to walk on all fours, give her things to chew on, and watch her play with a squeaky toy… the line between baby and pet is beginning to blur. I’m starting to feel bad about all of those jokes I made about keeping her in the guinea pig cage.

Perhaps I’m pushing my luck just by clacking away on the keyboard, but she’s been sleeping in her crib for the past hour while I’ve been glued to bed waiting for the first signs of distress. That last sigh to come over the airwaves certainly sounded like her typically sleeping sigh. Maybe I can at least put my head back on the pillow… to sleep, perchance to dream?

I remember the 25th anniversary of Woodstock, and realizing that Thriller is as ancient to kids in high school as Woodstock is to me is making me feel ancient.

Since the driving force behind the Internet (besides porn, of course) seems to be 30 somethings who failed to notice that they are no longer 20 somethings and gasp in amazement as they realize that their childhood actually took place many moons ago, now seems like the perfect time to point him and my other aging friends in the direction of kottke’s Timeline twins post.

His Back to the Future/To Kill a Mockingbird “comparison” hits me hardest. I remember seeing that Michael J. Fox opus in the theater with my best friend and then spending the rest of the summer pretending to hitch rides on cars while sitting on skateboards (my balance on those wheels was terrible) and dodging the angry principal. Did kids spend the summer of ‘62 rolling down hills in tires and pretending to defend black men in rape trials? Suddenly my childhood seems rather mundane…

Anyway, to stem the bleeding of lameness that is a 32 year-old man complaining about “feeling old” I’d rather just switch to something awesome about Thriller instead. And that would be François Macré’s 64-track, a capella version of said song:

That’s a better use of 350 hours of time than just about anything I’ve ever done. In particular, the muted guitar and bass line are incredible. My only wish is that he had used the original vocals by Michael Jackson so that I could better hear just how close the musical part sounds.

Want to win FREE Greeting cards? Learn how!

Make sure you check out the naughty designs even if you want a nice one - otherwise you might miss out on Creepy Santa…

Anyway, most of what I’ve processed thus far has been family-type photos - not too many that I’m in a rush to post on the web. But we did do this one “photoshoot”. Kind of a complement to the flowery shot I posted on her 1 month birthday - it’s another adorable dress provided by the same co-worker of mine. And to give you an idea of just how cute/adorable/beautiful/amazing my little girl is, here are a select few:

As you can see, I’ve had more pressing matters than this website. And I know, everybody thinks their little baby is the cutest - but I have photographic evidence to back me up!

I do intend to revive my poorly conceived music blog at some point in the near future. Doing so will coincide with whenever I finish my “Best of 2008″ list - yes, I’m sure you’re all giddy with anticipation. However, until that time I wanted to point out that Amazon.com is still running their Black Friday promotions, which includes their top 50 mp3 albums for 5 bucks.

Normally I would assume that the top 50 albums were all pure crap, but there’s a lot of good music there. I’ll tell you right now that Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend*, She & Him - Volume One*, Santogold - Santogold*, Moby - Last Night, Mates of State - Re-arrange Us*  and Jamie Lidell - Jim will all be on the list or honorable mentions. There’s also several other worthwhile downloads and a few that I just picked up myself. Not sure how much longer this sale will go on, so take advantage while you can.

* - These ones are also available on eMusic.

But I’m not packing it in. I just need to relearn how to operate this blog and… type. Yeah, I gotta remember how to type words and stuff. Maybe even try to be coherent. Then again, that was probably never my strong suit so let’s just focus on get some semblance of the English language up on the web. That would put me one step ahead of a typical Youtube comment.

It’s about time that I get back on the proverbial horse, so here I am. And I’m trying to tidy things up while I’m at it. In case you hadn’t noticed (and why should you) I changed the color theme to a lighter, more friendly one. It’s still the same, lovely Fauna from Joen, but the dark version of it was making me a tad depressed so I switched.

You may have also notice that I joined the Twitter revolution… 2 years after the fact. I am incredibly difficult to find, unless you know my name or look at the sidebar 2 inches to your right (assuming you’re reading this on my website and not in a feed reader). I have no intentions of putting my witty and insightful Twitter comments in summary blog posts (or the bland and mundane ones for that matter), so you’ll either have to follow me or hit refresh on the main page every couple of days to get my instantaneous LOL response to someone else’s comments… ain’t Web 2.0 exciting?

The links on the sidebar are also slowly being updated. Two of my favorite blogs of late have finally been added - jonsonblog and Man vs. Clown! I have no idea how I came upon either of them and they both tend to fall on the crude or disturbing side of humor; yet jonson may have the most adorable daughter not to come from my own loins and Peter has left me wondering what to do when you end a sentence with a title that ends in an exclamation point…

Also I started reading Ken Jenning’s blog, because he’s witty, funny and won a lot of money on a real game show.

Believe it or not, I expect to post even more these days. That’s helped by the fact that I’m taking more vacation days and not accomplishing anything except learning the rest of the lyrics to “Beyond the Sea” in order to sing Kayleigh to sleep. Welcome back, indeed.

Let’s face it, I, like many others out there, was never convinced that a black man would ever be elected to the presidency. And even if this is really just a setup for failure, the fact that it happened does make me feel a little bit better about this country. Balk all you like at the silly, white college kids patting themselves on the back for voting for someone different, but don’t try to pretend this wasn’t an historic occasion. Think of it this way: out of the previous 43 presidents more than a third of them (16) could have owned Obama. And another 20 of them probably would have used a separate fountain or bathroom than him at some time. And the last 7 would have crossed the street if they saw him walking towards them…

Alright, I made that last part up. Just checking if you were paying attention.

But seriously, as cynical as I can be, I’m not going to complain if people are inspired by a politican’s talk of hope and change. Because, whether or not those words turn out to be nothing more than hollow catchphrases, they are a far better source of inspiration than the words of fear and hatred that have “guided” us for the past few year.

I am loathe to continue writing politics at this point (today I had the rather fun task of deleting political sites from my feed reader) but it still seems like I should at least comment on an event like this. So that’s what I have to say: cool.

And while I’m sure you’ve all had your fill of Obamamania, there are a few sites I hope no one missed:

• All of the front pages after the election. And I’m serious when I say all of them. I don’t know how Palin has the time to read them all… ZING! (thanks to Electoral-vote.com)
• A beautiful collection of photos from throughout Obama’s campaign. You’re all checking out The Big Picture regularly, right?
• As wonderful as those photos are (almost every shot looks like it’s meant to be a poster or wallpaper), I prefer Callie Shell’s set over at Digital Journalist. A lot more candid photos - the way I like it…

And that’s that. Now I can go back to ignoring the government - just the way I like it…

Brad Lidge and Carlos Ruiz celebrate winning it all after the end of the ninth inning.

I’ve had a post about life as a Philly fan planned for awhile. Maybe I’ll still write it to give you guys some perspective. People will still try to convince me they understand the pain because one team they follow hasn’t done well in a while. But that’s nothing compared to growing up with an expectation that championships are for other teams and other towns because they never involve you. Suddenly that image has been shattered thanks to a rather unorthodox game that took over 48 hours to complete.

I’m serious about it being shattered. You want to know what 25 years of misery disappearing in an instant looks like? Watch this video from the Phillies club in Hoboken during the final pitch (courtesy of Furey):

Yeah, wish I could have at least been there. Immediately following the game there was a whirlwind of phone calls between myself, my mom, my dad, my friend Mark, and my sister Kathleen, who lives farthest from home of all of the siblings. While I may be a frustrating 2 hours away from the big celebration, the 15-20 hour drive from Alabama (depending on whose directions you take) is a far greater challenge for her. And thus we both lamented being away from the city at a time like this. The idea of taking off work tomorrow to drive down for the parade has been beaten back several times today.

At least I can revel in all of the highlights playing nonstop for the next few days, including this tremendous video of the great Harry Kalas finally getting to call that last out in a World Series victory (the MLB wouldn’t allow local announcers back in 1980):

Yeah, it’s totally lame that I haven’t posted in over a month and the first sign of life is some ramblings about sports (why don’t I just throw in some political discourse while I’m at it), but this post has been a quarter century in the waiting. And while I’m one of the first people to complain about the ridiculous salaries of ball players and the disconnect from the fans, this team was just filled with great stories to get behind (and watching them celebrate makes it hard to believe they don’t feel it, too):

• Charlie Manuel managing his team to the championship while dealing with the loss of his mother.
• 45 year-old Jamie Moyer finally making it to the World Series with the team he cheered on as a kid (he was even at the parade in ‘80).
• On the opposite end, Cole Hamels absolutely dominating the playoffs (and winning 2 MVP awards) for a team that last won it all 3 years before he was born.
• Brad Lidge achieving true perfection while clinching the championship and shook the monkey that was the 2005 playoffs off his back.
• Ruiz’s infield RBI single in the bottom of the ninth against a stacked infield to win game 3.
• Journeyman Matt Stairs with his pinch hit homer to win game 4 of the NLDS.
• Memorable plate appearances by pitcher Brett Meyers in the NLDS and NLCS followed up by Joe Blanton home run in the WS.
• Burrell doubling to start the bottom of the 8th in game 5 after not having a hit all series. That turned into the winning run.
• Utley’s clutch throw to home in the top of the 8th to preserve the 3-3 tie.

Guys like Howard, Werth, Utley, Burrell, Feliz, Ruiz, etc. all took turns being the hero, it’s hard to mention everybody and I’m no sportwriter. Thankfully there’s guys like Phil Sheridan and Bill Lyon, writers who guided me through sports as a youngster, to put into far more eloquent words the thoughts and feelings I’m bumbling through. Then again, maybe it’s the simpler words of Lidge that sum it up best: “This is our time right now, and I don’t give a crap about all the rest.”

So yeah, I’m riding a bit of a high today because, for the first time since I became a sports fan, it’s my team.

P.S. Along with all of the furious Wikipedia edits that were made last night, the most important update was also made: the clock has been reset!

Normally I’m rather rational and collected, but over the past few months I’ve inched closer and closer to a full-on raging moron. It was never more evident than mere days after our kitchen was completed (oh yeah, I still have to post about that, don’t I?). While transporting leftover Chinese food to the fridge I managed to flip a HUGE container of fried rice all over our beautiful new tile floor.

Alright, I may not be the most coordinated guy, but (while sober) I’ve never really dropped anything more than the occasional crumb on the floor. This can actually be frustrating for The Woman as it tends to shine a spotlight on the fact that she is guaranteed to spill something on herself whenever wearing new clothes (that’s also when she’s most likely to let out some obscenities that are sooooo much cuter coming from her). Regardless, not only was I the first person to spill food in the new kitchen, but I managed to COAT the floor with the greasy remains of a full dinner - badly enough that the wet/dry vac made an appearance.

And now that she is recovering from 9 months of construction in her uterus, my brain is still on some sort of extended paternity leave. Last night (or was it the freakin’ night before? Damned if I know) I managed to pour myself a glass of water right after filling up the Brita pitcher. for those of you unaware of just how one of their pitchers works, rest assured that is not the correct usage and resulted in giving our dresser a sponge bath.

Even more annoying is never knowing WHAT DAY OF THE WEEK IT IS! I’m serious. Sure, I took Friday off which made it feel like Saturday and Saturday felt like Sunday and Sunday felt like a new day of the week not yet invented that gave us a third day off, but WHY DOES TODAY FEEL LIKE TUESDAY? Practically every week for the last couple of months I’ve found myself planning work on Tuesday and thinking there was only 2 days left in the week or walking in on Thursday morning looking forward to the weekend starting at the end of the day. WHERE IS MY MIND?!?!

Then again, maybe some of my friends will pop on here and say, “Dude, you were never clear-headed or rational”. But then I’ll be forced to point out that they are used to me drinking and playing video games - all bets are off then…

Being of that persuasion up here in North Jersey is not exactly a fun experience - especially with the results of last year’s Super Bowl (which even forced me to root for the enemy). Thus we cling to each other in small groups, usually at whatever bar will take us. In Hoboken the place to be for Eagles fans on Sundays is Mulligan’s - who has kindly played host to us for the past two seasons. Unfortunately, no matter how much I looked forward to meeting up with a few friends I haven’t seen in months, the craptacular parking and traffic situation in Hoboken finally pushed my to the edge 20 FREAKIN’ MINUTES AFTER THE GAME WAS SUPPOSED TO START. I turned the car around and headed home. Hey, I’d rather spend the first game with my baby girl anyway. And apparently she’d rather spend it with me, too.

That photo isn’t even close to the biggest smile she had while “wearing” my jersey. I asked what jersey she wanted for herself and she seemed most interested in DeSean Jackson. I explained that it’s never a good idea to go with a rookie, because you never know if they really are going to be as good as promised even after a full game and we shouldn’t get our hopes up. That didn’t seem to phase her. Honestly, there’s just no reasoning with this kid…

Thanks to the magic of DVR I didn’t even miss any of the awesome opener (a total destruction of St. Louis 38-3) and got to spend most of it with my beautiful baby girl smiling at me from my lap. She actually seemed to thoroughly enjoy watching my reactions to the game - maybe even more than when I try to interact with her directly. Thank god, because she has no idea the kind of fandom she was born into. This is a fandom of bad luck and depression that somehow keeps us coming back for more. Now I’ve got another generation to force it upon - at last, the circle is complete!

At least for her first real football action there was something to cheer about. Let’s see just how long that can last…