Surfergeeks

So Alex is 4 weeks old today. Yup, our son is now a month old. Because of that it’s time to update on how he compares with normal development.

So by the end of this month SHOULD be able to:

*lift head briefly when on stomach on a flat surface – yup
*focus on a face – yup

…will PROBABLY be able to:

*respond to a bell in some way, such as startling, crying, quieting – we haven’t used a bell, but he does startle to loud sounds. In fact that last thunderstorm scared the shit out of him!
*follow an object moved in an arch about 6 inches above the face to the midline (straight ahead) - he doesn’t seem to. Rob and I both try and he’s only followed our fingers once and we both think it might have been a coincidence.

…may POSSIBLY be able to:

*on stomach, lift head 45 degrees - yup, he’s probably up to about 90 degrees now(see below), but then he’s been jerking his head up for the last couple weeks. While burping, he’s even head butted Daddy a couple times.
*vocalize in ways other than crying (e.g. cooing) – I’m not sure on this. He does have a new “cry” that isn’t really a cry, but it doesn’t fit my definitition of a coo, especially since he’s doing it when he is upset, just as when he cries. But at least he’s got a new way to express himself. Along the same lines, he seems to be trying to make new sounds. There are times he opens his mouth in response to something Rob or I have said to him and it so looks like he is trying to say something back. But then that could be a parent’s imagination.
*follow an object moved in an arch about 6 inches about the face past the midline(straight ahead) – nope, seeing as he’s not doing the easier one yet!
*smile in response to your smile - sigh, not yet. Been trying to get him to do this for quite a while. At least he smiles, but it’s random.

…may even be able to:

*on stomach, lift head 90 degrees – yup, see above.
*bring both hands together - yup, Rob’s got a cute picture of him clasping his hands. Eventually, he should get it posted.
*smile spontaneously – yup and already mentioned.
*laugh out loud – nope and another sigh. I’ve been trying to get him to laugh for a while. Tickling his feet, giving him strawberries, making faces, but no go. Hopefully, he will soon, it’ll be a nice change from the screaming.
*squeal in delight – nope. Still doing nothing but scream it seems.
*follow an object in an arc about 6 inches above the face for 180 degrees (from one side to the other) – covered this one a couple times and it’s still a nope.

So it’s seems Alexander is pretty much just average so far. I’m fine with that, it’s good to see that he seems normal and healthy so far. No one wants their nightmares to come true when it comes to their children.

So next month, I will update his development again. It’ll probably be on the second of the month rather than exactly 8 weeks, it’ll be easier to keep track of when I have to post that way.

That’s right boys and girls – it’s time for the new TV season recap!

Wow, there’s a ton of new shows on this year, and oddly enough, not one of them starts with “CSI:” or “Law & Order”.

As y’all know, Nikki & I are HUGE TV junkies. Well, in this part of the recap, I’ll look at some new shows and some returning shows. There are still a few shows that haven’t premiered yet so I’ll post about those after they do.

I’m going to attempt this in some sort of order. I’ll go with new shows first, then tackle the returning shows.

The War At Home – FOX Sun 8:30pm
This show stars Michael Rapaport as a father/husband. The rest of the cast appears to be unknown. It’s a half-hour sitcom. If you watched and enjoyed FOX’s ‘Quintuplets’ last season, you’ll probably enjoy this. I swear the writers came from that show to this one – and brought along a few scripts.

Kitchen Confidential – FOX Mon 8:30pm
A comedy starring Bradley Cooper (Will from Alias) and co-stars Nicholas Brendan (Xander from Buffy). Cooper stars as the head chef of a new restaurant and must deal with the antics of a slightly criminal staff while also coping with his rather checkered past. Throw in a pinch of your usual comediac restaurant hijinks, stir, simmer for 22 minutes and you have a pretty decent sitcom. I don’t think it’ll last though.

Prison Break – FOX Mon 9pm
This show was actually supposed to launch back in late June/early July. It was then pushed until late August. The show centres around the character of Michael, an engineer who went and got himself arrested and sentenced to prison. On purpose. Why would anyone want to do that, you ask? Well, you see, Michael’s brother, Lincoln, is at the prison; sentenced to die for a crime he did not commit (queue A-Team music). Mikey’s big plan is to bust him and his brother out of prison. Easy to do when you designed the prison. So we’re a few episodes into the show and it’s just as compelling as the first episode. From what I see, the ratings should keep this show alive throughout it’s first season. The writing is good and it keeps us coming back every Monday night. If you haven’t started watching this show, it’s probably not too late yet to get into it, but I wouldn’t wait much longer or else the plot will have progessed too far to fully understand what’s all going on.

Bones – FOX Tues 8pm
This show stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz. Deschanel plays the starring role of Temperance ‘Bones’ Brennan. Boreanaz plays tough FBI guy Seeley Booth. These two work together (with the help of other’s in Bones’ lab) to solve crimes – using bones as the starting point. Think CSI – except without cool gadgets. Lots of bones. Though there is a cool holograph thing that they seem to enjoy using. This is based on a Canadian author’s works whose name escapes me at the moment. Jen knows it, maybe she’ll comment.

My Name Is Earl – NBC Tues 9pm
Okay, I first saw commercials for this during NASCAR races – really the PERFECT place to promote this show about a redneck loser. The commercials didn’t really explain exactly what it was about, but it did star Jason Lee. I was really on the fence on this one. The commercials made it look stupid, but it has Jason Lee. Lee has been outrageously funny in almost everything I have seen him in (which is pretty much all Kevin Smith flicks). So I decided to check it out. We’re two episodes in and it’s a pretty funny show. Ethan Surplee co-stars as Lee’s not-so-bright brother. For those who don’t know/remember, Ethan Surplee played the part of Willam in Mallrats – the dude trying to see the stereogram picture. It’s hard to say if this show is going to make it or not. We’ll see…

Invasion – ABC Wed 10pm
The first episode of this new series benefitted following the season premiere of Lost. This story centers around a hurricane that rocked Florida. But was it really a hurricane? Or was it a cover for some type of unknown (alien???) activity. All is not well in the everglades. It’s an interesting show. We’ll probably keep watching simply because we can record it but I’m not too terribly into it yet. I think that it’s strong Lost lead-in will keep the viewers from switching to Law & Order (or whatever Fox & CBS are showing) so it should at least make it through the season.

Reunion – FOX Thurs 9pm
This is most definitely another one of those ‘unique’ series that FOX is trying. It worked for 24 so let’s modify it a bit and try again. Both Nikki & I were skeptical at first, but have found that we actually enjoy it. The unique part of this series is each episode deals with the lives of six high school friends post graduation. Each episode is essentially a year of their life. The first one starts in 1986. The second one is ’87 and so on. It also mixes in clips from the present as there is an attempt to solve the homicide of one of the friends in present day. Another refreshing show. It’s in a tough time slot though, competing with Survivor. Hopefully it makes it – we want to know whodunnit.

Okay, that seems to do it for the new shows. I thought there were a lot more than that. Guess I was wrong.

I was going to do all the shows in one post. But I’ve changed my mind. I’ll make another post in a bit about the returning shows. Probably sometime Friday or Saturday. By then all the shows we watch will have returned and it will a complete post.

While reading Fark, I came across this article about a plasma pencil. Now, it’s a little different than what you think. The article talks about its use in the medical field and I thought it was quite interesting and would be amazing if it did become used in mainstream medicine.

Check it out here.

Well, I took down another $5 Sit ‘N Go today, adding another $21 dollars into my account. Granted, not too long after that , I lost a $5 SNG but I’m still up. I have a new goal. My poker account is going to be my XBox360 account. I just need to build it up to about $600 by November 22 and I’ll be able to afford to buy it! Woohoo! $540 to go!

Okee, the pic section is back up and running now. It took a while. We had a few episodes of Lost to watch still (priorities you see). It’s got a different look to it than before. Hopefully not many pictures are missing. I *KNOW* one is missing and I’m not sure why. I’ll have to re-upload it at a later date. It’s the really cool lightning shot from my misc. pics section.

So, one of the reasons (okay, probably THE reason) that no one has really heard much from us here or in RL these past few days is that Nikki & I have been watching Lost. The entire season. I acquired season one of ABC’s Lost over the course of five days starting last week and we started watching it. I’d heard MANY good things about this show but by the time I’d really heard anything it was too far into the season to start waching. Fortunately season one just dropped on DVD, just in time for the season two premiere next Wednesday.

All I can say is if you’ve never watched the show, you really need to go out and buy (since renting is almost as expensive) season one, take two or three days off work, unplug your phones, and watch. Do it soon! If you can’t do it before season two starts, make sure you set your PVRs to record season two until you can watch season one. It’s definitely one of the best shows on TV right now. The writing is top notch – on par with that of The West Wing. I can definitely see why this show, along with Desperate Housewives, sweeped the networks last year.

Okay, so, at the current moment, there really isn’t any access to the photo gallery. There was an update see. So I updated. And somehow that broke it. So now I’m doing an install of an even newer version of the Gallery program that I use. I had attempted to upgrade from the 1.4.3 that I was using to 1.5 through my webhost. That’s what tanked the whole she-bang. So now I’m moving over to Gallery 2. It seems a lot better. If I’m not able to migrate the pictures over (REALLY hoping I can) then I have to reupload everything. THAT could take a while. I’ll post a followup message when everything is up and running again.

Okay, time for a break from the baby report to talk about something else: US! We both were playing poker today. The first tournament we entered was a $500 Bonus Dollar tournament. (Bonus dollars accumulate in your account and as you play real money games, these dollars are released to you – slowly.) This first picture is a shot of the leaderboard at one point in the game (not early in the game either). At one point the leader is a user by the name of ‘n1kita‘. That user is my beloved Nikki! That’s right…she was LEADING the pack. This tourny started out with 2500 (!!!!) players. I didn’t do that good.

Alright, so, the tournament continues. As the 2500 players are whittled down, one-by-one they fall, until only 10 remain. These 10 competitors will form the Final Table. ‘n1kita‘, while no longer having chip lead, is still a presence and has progressed to the final table. This is her first time at a final table. (I still haven’t been that fortunate!)

So, this is a shot of the final outcome of the tournament. Nikki finished in EIGHTH PLACE!!!! That is AWESOME! She beat out 2492 other players!

We also played in another tournament for 5000 Ultimate Points. I lasted all of two hands before busting out on that one. Nic lasted longer, but was still out of it long before that above tourny ended.

Okay, it’s not all about Nikki though. Just before dinner I entered into a $5+.50 Sit ‘N Go tournament. Myself and 5 others sat down for a game of cards where the top 2 players walk away with some cash. First place takes home $21 and second wins $9. It was an interesting tournament. I certainly didn’t play as strong as I probably should have. There were many pots that I folded out of that would have seen me gather chips at an even faster rate. This little match lasted about 45 minutes. The screenshot shows how well I did!

There were a couple extra screenshots in this post showing the first place standing and the final table screenshot however I couldn’t get the damn post formatted so that it showed all the pictures properly. Grr. Stupid HTML.

So, I’m busy making up a batch o’ formula for the kid whilst Nic has Alex in the bedroom checking him to see if he needs changing. All I hear from the back is, “Oh shit.”

So I finish making the formula and as I’m shaking it, I walk towards the bedroom. “Did he poopie?” I ask.

She turns and looks at me over her shoulder, “We’re going to have to pull out the change table.”

I look at the wall and see a wet spot followed by a stream heading back behind the change table. Alex has a mighty strong stream let me tell you! I just started laughing. And laughing. And then I headed in here to post this.

More pics are up. The newest ones are on the first 3 pages. 4o more pictures.

Okay, the first part of the pictures are up now! Just hit the ‘Photo Gallery’ link at the bottom of the left hand column. This pics cover up to first thing Saturday morning. I’ve got more on the camera that I need to transfer over, resize, and then post.

You’ll notice that only a few of the pictures have captions. I snapped multiple pictures within seconds of each other and there’s really only so much you can say about virtually the same picture over and over again.