So, on Tuesday I was about two hours late to work, my alarm having failed and my boss (who was in at 5am, when I should have been) calling the wrong Dan. No one seemed to mind, and I didn't take a break till about 10.50am. The timing was perfect though, cause I got back to my desk to find an email from Tariqa saying her waters had broke, and it was showtime...

My boss dropped me off home, and we made sure we had everything on the list - Tariqa had most of it together, but he wasn't supposed to come till Friday, so we were taken a little off guard. Still, we got it all sorted and left for the hospital. 

We got there just before 12.30pm, and we assigned a room where she had her first contraction - it was definitely on today it seemed. Midwives and doctors looked at things, etc etc, and decided we should go home and come back after rush hour or at the very latest, 5am the following morning. We weren't keen, but they're doctors and we're not, so we started shuffling down the corridoor - where Tariqa let out a massive yell, and we quickly turned around and told them we were staying. 

Just as well too, cause a quick check showed she was almost halfway to giving birth...

In the birthing room (or whatever it's called), there was this machine that had a button that needed to pressed every 15 minutes or so, it would... beep. Not quite Lost's 'saving the world', but hey. And one of the doctors looked like Libby.

He came at 7.27pm, about ten minutes after the midwife who'd helped us through the past few hours had left - she returned though to see him, along with a bunch of paediatricians who did some checks and things, including one where they test his reactions by standing him up and briefly letting him go, which I wasn't prepared for and thought, shit... he was purple and really smooth, like he was made of leather, and was sleeping. He went to sleep in the womb and woke up under a light with a bunch of people sticking things in his mouth and wiping him down, which must've been pretty... bizarre.

After that, I had to get home, so drove by myself for the first time ever - at night, in the rain, getting completely lost and driving on streets I'd never seen before. When I left, I realised I had my L plates on, which would attract attention, so pulled over in what I thought was a parking bay to remove them - but it had no parking lines - turns out it wasn't a parking bay, but a turn off for ambulances. Oops. Hill start, couple of stalls and I was back in traffic, eventually taking a U-turn on Great North road to be about 45 min late home.

So yeah, that's an edited highlights. Since then he's slept a lot, and we've had trouble getting him awake and feeding - pretty much the opposite problem I thought people had with babies. We've discovered tonight he's quite partial to the bottle, which is handy as a backup.

Umm, yeah. Really tired. Not a lot of sleep. 

I'm not sure if we're even playing Scrabulous Lexulous anymore...

Parker's scans this morning I'm told came out fine. Wooo. 

 I've got a CD of Beatles tunes done by little kids, Dark Side of the Moon & Sgt Peppers posters on the wall, a couple of keyboards lying around and he's half named after Ryan Adams, so Parker should be cranking out some classic music by the time he's five! WOOOO!

I promise I'll post a blow-by-blow story soon.

 

Back to work today, but I'm not sure how it will go. Had physio yesterday, seems that although a pinched nerve might be contributing to the problem in my right hand, it's also looking like a case of tendonitis and a lack of signals getting from my brain to my fingers.

When I hold my hands still, the fingers on my right hand shake a bit, because apparently they're lacking stability information from the brain, like the steadicam feature on a handicam.

The splint is beginning to cause its own problems - it can get quite uncomfortable, probably because it is designed more for thumb support than anything else.

The physio guy has prescribed me this odd routine of dipping my feet in and out of icy/hot buckets of water - something about reprogramming my nervous system or something.

Of all the times for something like this to come up, this is the worst! Christmas/New Years, which meant it was a week and a half from the time I saw the doctor before getting to physio, and if it gets any worse it will impact on my ability to do my job, and with babby due soon, that's not good.

Lucky I'm taking a break from guitar, huh? But if I can't use a computer much, the all-electro album isn't going to get far either. Grrr.

I suppose instead of posting silly pics and random bits it's about time I should actually make a classic LJ entry with what's actually happening in my life, etc etc. As boring as that is.

Well... after months of bitching, I finally did something about the taxi situation at work. Basically, up until recently, everyone in the news dept got company-paid taxis home if they were working late, and us in the online dept didn't, despit the fact on most nights we're the last ones to leave, usually between 12am and 1am, and at least two of us at any one time have 5am starts. I was at the company orientation day (seven months after starting!) on Wednesday last week, and the bigwigs were giving their 'online is the future and vitally important to the business' speeches. I didn't want to stick my hand up and make a scene during the presentation, but when one of them wandered over to our group during morning tea, with the encouragement of the other online people there I decided to speak up.

I simply asked her why, if we're so important and the future of the business, were we paid the least and not given carparks so are basically forced to walk home in the middle of the night...? And to my surprise, she said when the taxi system was rejigged a couple of months ago, we were meant to be included - funny, cause we all remember when the system was rejigged, and how we were first told we had taxis, then when we went to claim them we were told it was a mistake, and we didn't get them.

But now we do, and it's awesome - no more dodging drunks and oddballs in the middle of the night on the way home!

So that's pretty boring to anyone but us online people I suppose. I suppose I've also been a bit reluctant to write recently because we've had a few baby-related headaches, which is nothing any of you need to know about in any specific detail. We're pretty confident it's all worry and stress over nothing, but it's been a reminder having a baby certainly isn't the easiest thing in the world. It's the kind of thing that would never have been noticed before ultrasound was around, and the docs don't really know too much about, but reading about it on the net it seems the overriding vast majority of experiences end in completely normal babies, so yeah. Don't stress, cause we don't need anymore of that.

The house is slowly beginning to show signs of an impending mini-Dan though. Unfortunately, the cats seem to think the house is slowly beginning to show signs of cat domination, as you can see to the right.

tariqa  went and saw The Phantom of the Opera the other night, so you should tell her to post something about it.

TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE LAST 3 WEEKS!

1. Chinese Democracy - Guns n' Roses (I never thought I'd be able to write that)
2. LadyHawke - LadyHawke
3. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
4. Dig Out Your Soul - Oasis
5. Only by the Night - Kings of Leon
6. Dear Science - TV On the Radio
7. Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires
8. 808s and Heartbreak - Kanye West
9. Electric Arguments - The Fireman
10. Day & Age - The Killers

Despite the ridiculous autotuning on the Kanye West album - even when he's rapping - there's something about it which makes it all work. I suppose it's the singular, consistent vision of the album, it kind of exists in its own world or something. Best track? 'Paranoid'. It's full-on electro-pop, but without sampling Daft Punk or anything. I tried the autotune on my own vocals for the new stuff, but as it's not as electro as Kanye's stuff, I couldn't really get it to fit in.

And Chinese Democracy? It's a good album, surprisingly enough. And perhaps even more surprisingly, it's not overly compressed and brick-walled like 99% of other hard rock albums nowadays. You can actually hear how brilliant the production is, and the songs ain't bad either - particularly 'Sorry', 'Better', and the Beatles-esque 'Catcher in the Rye'. And the guitar solo on 'Shackler's Revenge' is bizarro - I assume that's Buckethead's work.

This is baby today during an ultrasound - is it just me, or is he flashing the devil horns?

 

As hard as I try, I could never write something as awesome as this commercial.



Nor this song by Suede - I think this clip has to rate in the all-time live things I've come across on YouTube ever.


Yep. I'd love to have that gig on DVD, if it exists. What the hell happened (apart from the cocaine, heroin and crack) to his voice in the past ten years? Because as much as people talk and write about the epicness of old-school Floyd and Zep live material, this is up there.

I felt the baby kick tonight for the first time. Bebe's been kicking for ages now, but always refused when I placed my hand on Tariqa's belly. But tonight, I managed to get one! Wooo. I no longer believe this is some kind of elaborate pizza-based hoax.

We're going to Armageddon tomorrow, Tariqa has a free day pass. I don't really know what to expect, even after watching The 40 Year Old Virgin tonight.

EDIT: I've put the correct video for Suede on now. No, they never sang about mini malls - though at least 25% of their songs referenced carparks, I'm sure.

If eight left-wing parties receive 10% of the vote each, and one right-wing party gets 20%, do you think NZ should have a right-wing govt? No, because 80% of people voted left - and under MMP, the majority will get their way. under FPP, the majority 80% will be overruled by the 20% that voted right. This is why MMP is far superior to FPP - you can exchange right for left, the same applies. If you cannot understand this, you shouldn't get to vote at all.

Simple enough? Can you please stop whining now?

I haven't posted much recently 'cause I've been playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, both I and II. Truly awesome games, and better storylines than the prequels in some ways.

I was really tired this morning when I woke up, so tired I felt hungover. So I went to the dairy, and holy fuck - you can get 500ml cans of V. The caffeine arms race is really getting out of hand. So is the price of Rivermill bread - I swear last time I bought some it was $1.50, today it was $3.80. I'm going to assume the wrong price stickers were in the wrong places. 

I'm going to Htown for election day/night, to celebrate/drown sorrows with some like-minded friends who don't want to see Castle Helengrad fall. And it's my sister's birthday the following day, so two birds, one stone and all that. Actually three, cause mum's apparently got loads of baby stuff for us to bring back. Have I mentioned he never, ever kicks when I put my hand on tariqa 's belly? I'm going to pretend he knows who's boss. If only I could get the cats to be so learned.

What movie should I take tariqa  to tomorrow night? Any ideas? Seen Wall-E already.


TOP TEN ALBUMS OF THE LAST MONTH!

1. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
2. Oasis - Dig Out Your Soul
3. Metallica - Death Magnetic
4. TV On The Radio - Dear Science (yes, I actually like this one)
5. The Stills - Oceans Will Rise
6. My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
7. Scars on Broadway - Scars on Broadway
8. Coldplay - Viva La Vida
9. Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement
10. Keane - Perfect Symmetry

John Cleese has demoted Michael Palin to #2 on his list of funniest Palins. No prizes for guessing who's now #1.

I just found out this guy from A Clockwork Orange is Darth Vader. The guy inside the voice, not the voice, of course.

Maybe it's my dad genes kicking in, but this is pretty funny. 

And now that I've just spent an hour and a half or so translating what I think of the new Oasis and Keane albums into 240 words or so for a review, I have to say almost the whole time, I've been listening to fucking Be Here Now, and I'm still not even half way through it; and it rocks. Yes, I've fully ingested Perfect Symmetry and Dig Out Your Soul, but Be Here Now is a part of my adolescent musical education I can't deny. Yeah, it's loud as hell, which in some ways places it 10 years ahead of its time, but there's so much random shit going on, and the 'modern' loudness is being applied to a '90s cocaine-fuelled mix, and yeah.

I should re-do my 128k mp4s into 192 though. When I got my first iPod,  it was hard to imagine that within four years my monthly data allowance would be as large as my hard drive ( at the time).

My landlord was supposed to be doing a flat inspection today, but never showed. And I'd totally taken down all the posters and removed the Star Wars displays and vacuumed. And shit.

I can't wait to introduce new Dan (not his actual name) to Sesame St. And I can't believe 'Chickens in the Trees' is EXACTLY how I remember it. Normally these things become more awesome over time, and turn out to be lame in reality, but not this clip. It's as awesome as it was the day it aired.

It's been over a year since the last, about time! Cardinology. 

And since I haven't mentioned it here, only on Facebook, baby is a boy, and I'm sure he'll love me for putting this pic on the interwebs.

Thanks for your messages on the last post - it's still to reach 'Pics from laptop's 17 comments though :p Hehe.

Be-be (as we're calling it at this stage, but rest assured won't be it's actual name) is due in mid-February, which perhaps rules out Camp A Low Hum 2009, should there be one. I had a dream the other night it was being held on an 'island in Afghanistan', which boggles the mind.

But anyway, a rant. Telecom are looking at shifting their entire call centre operation to Manila, and using the excuse (from the Herald): In the email customer services manager Trish Keith said the trials, which would run from September to December, reflected Telecom's desire to put customers at "the heart" of the business.

Because customers just LOVE operators who follow scripts, don't understand English very well and have no clue of the areas they are talking about. I'm currently six weeks or so into trying to get them to fix our broken broadband (most evenings it doesn't work at all), and it's a comedy every time I try to call them. I've been told it's the streetlight outside, it's power surges affecting the modem, it's a neighbour's cordless phone, it's the new Mt Albert ADSL2 cabinet, I half expect the next person I speak to (which will be tonight, in this week's second call) to blame it on the full moon.

Ta-dah...