Happy 1st Birthday, Natalie!

The bug turns 1!

Newborn


2 Months


4 Months


6 Months


8 Months


10 Months

1 year pic sure to follow! Prepare to have your mind blown.

Totally Unnecessary...Worse Than Nothing

Two posts in one day, for this? There's no possible reason for these pictures to exist, no single soul that could ever be interested in viewing them--but I have to look at my barren, dreary cubicle every day, and my camera was still in my bag from the weekend, so now you must look at it. Behold...MY CUBE!

Have You Ever Hit Your Grandma? In The Face? With A Canoe?

Ah, finally back from vacation. The first several days can be summed up with golf, beer, and movies. I saw Da Vinci Code. It was pretty good.

After a quick and terrible 27 holes on Friday I headed home for x-treme lazing with the fam. It's about a 4 hour drive and I killed the time with these audio spanish lessons which I obtained totally legally through a legitimate file sharing service. They come in half hour blocks, and taken one at a time they aren't too bad, but it turns out 8 of them in direct succession is about the most stressful thing ever, making the MCATs seem a jolly farce. Basically they give you a spanish conversation at the beginning, then fire off a bunch of definitions, then they say things in english which you are supposed to repeat back in spanish using the vocab you just learned and the initial conversation for context. Seems a reasonable enough approach, and pretty effective, only they give you just exactly enough time to repeat the sentence back before moving onto the next one, so if you delay even a little bit or can't think of (or in my case pronounce) a word, you fall irrevocably behind and your brain implodes. A reasonable person would probably just hit the pause button but by GOD I was going to make it through 8 lessons each way, and nothing on earth was going to stop me, least of all my continued mental well-being. But hey, if any of you spanish speakers want to discuss buying and paying for things, drinking cold beers and eating cold sandwiches, counting to 20, or finding the bathroom (as long as it's either aquí or allí), I'm totally down.

Uh, anyway, I got home pretty late and just headed to bed, having only nabbed about 3 hours the night before. I can't sleep at all lately. Arrrrrrrrrr. My niece is soooooooooooo adorable now. She just recently figured out walking and now she's all over the place, non-stop. There's a steady clumpclumpclumpclumpclump going at all hours of the day. She's not talking yet, but she can happily tell you that a doggie goes woof-woof (woo, woo!), a cow goes moo (ooooo!), a bird goes peep-peep (bee, bee!), and a monkey goes ah, ah, ah, EEEE (she gets that one just right). She also very nearly managed to say cheese:

Mom: Gwen, do you want some cheese?
Gwen: Baa!
Mom: Cheese.
Gwen: Bee.
Mom: Cheeeeeeese.
Gwen: Eech!
Mom: Cheeeeeeeeeeeeese.
Gwen: Bitch!
Me: BONG.

Other than watching her run around, I didn't do a whole lot. Dan and I played tennis and it was an embarrassment of epic proportions. I knew I'd be bad, but I could barely keep the ball in the court. By the end of the second set, I was finally starting to get my strokes back a little--not to say I was hitting well, but at least I was hitting properly--so perhaps there is hope for the summer. I couldn't get ahold of the one person I actually try to see when I'm back home, so the rest of the weekend was devoted to steady rotation of the Sci-Fi channel, the History channel, and napping.

I got back yesterday after another harrowing 4 hours of rapid-fire education to find Ball, God bless him, already in the parking lot with a cold beer in his outstretched hand and a brat spitting happily on the grill. We BBQd it up with the grad students for a while and then headed over to the pool where we sat around trying to fight the urge to toss Jani in fully clothed. Amy also would have made a lovely splash, but Rocky is much bigger than me, and may have eaten my head. Also his name is Rocky. You don't want to mess with that. The end.

So Long, '06

Ahhhhh, summer hours started today, which means that I get off at 4:30 every day and I no longer have to wear a tie. I love it. As a hilarious little summer hours prank, Old Man Winter lashed out this morning with a horrid 36 degree biting wind--ho ho! Thank God I did not check the weather before I left to bike over in one of my summer hours polos, so everyone got to see my nipples when I walked in.

This was commencement weekend, so sadly I had to work. It didn't stop be from partying like a rockstar though, as I was up into the wee hours of the morning Friday and Saturday doing something really awesome and cool that was not watching TV and chatting on IM. Mass on Saturday is pretty easy duty, I just had to be there by 3 and kind of mill around for two hours making sure nothing exploded, while I awkwardly told a sporadic influx of random seniors who apparently somehow know who I am that no, I am not getting my doctorate, I'm just some chump in a robe.

Commencement itself was a little more lengthy, though no more difficult. Every year we have to get there at 10, and every year there is literally nothing to do until 12:30. I grabbed a piece of couch and napped for about 45 minutes, then Jan and I passed a good half an hour making a totally awesome birthday card for one of our coworkers with a freaking sweet drawing of a pirate on the front. Oh man that was a sweet pirate. It's hard to explain what's so funny about getting an office of 40 and 50-somethings to sign a homemade birthday card with things like "Avast!" and "Blow me down, matey!" but I can confirm the comedy is of the pants-crapping variety.

The Commencement itself was a good one. Dave Brubeck was there to play a jazz piece for the departing class called "Traveling Blues". He was pretty impressive. The man is like 86, he could barely speak, and tried to wander off the stage when he was done performing, but he can apparently still play a mean piano. There was also a rather touching Notre Dame moment when Harper Lee was conferred her honorary degree, and all the students stood up and held copies of "To Kill a Mockingbird" aloft:

That is one happy little old lady. Mary McAleese, the President of Ireland, gave the commencement address and she was quite the speaker. The highlight was when she told us that "The Irish spirit is in your commitment, your confidence, your nevergiveupery." which tickles me just way more than it has any right to. I've been telling everyone. Nevergiveupery. Nevergiveupery!! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?? Is it funnier than a pirate themed homemade birthday card? I don't know. History will decide. But it was pretty funny.

In extremely awesome news, the sucktitude of having a severely curtailed weekend has been slightly assuaged--nay, wholly negated!--by having a mere two day work week ahead of me. I had previously taken Thursday and Friday off for plans that ended up falling through, and then imagine my dance of joy when I found out that not only do I have the following Monday off for Memorial Day, but my boss is giving the whole office Wednesday off as well as kind of a makeup for having to work this weekend. Sweet Pappy Johnson, I love it. I'm not even going to do anything. I'm going to play some golf, drink some beers, watch a whole lot of TV, and then head home for the weekend to pet the dogs, play with my niece, and hang out with the family.

And drinking some beers reminds me, Animal House mini-reunion, against all odds, is on for the weekend of June 9th, thanks to Goat's surprising and decisive pre-confirmation-that-anyone-else-can-make-it ticket purchase, so if you are in the midwest area and would like to hang out with some 'Tones of yore (and some lesser chumps), I encourage you to join us for revelry, boozeration, and the traditional planning and failure-of-execution of several needlessly complex missions with no chance of success.

Ah! And one more thing, if you have a few minutes definitely watch these. I can't guarantee that you will find them in any way funny...at all...but I pretty much want to Do them. Fuck you, Loggins!

Kill Me

Some dude is out on the quad jogging in spandex shorts and a sports bra. My God. You poor, sad sack of humiliation--what bet in hell did you lose? And yes, I am sure that it wasn't just a really ugly chick. Spandex shorts, friends. Unfortunately, I'm quite sure.

This has been a long, slow week. Graduation is this weekend, so theoretically it's a busy time for the office, but not so for me. A lot of people here are on their 20th, 30th, 40th graduation, and they do the same thing every year, so all the duties are pretty much covered--yet the dutiless chumps such as myself nevertheless have to stay late. Combine long empty days with no weekend to look forward to, and you have an unpleasant week. In fact, if that gender-confused jogger hadn't just added some color to my day, I'd probably be beating myself with my computer speakers right now just for a change of pace. I just read a HowStuffWorks article about police interrogation, that was pretty fun. Then I spun around in my chair for a while. Soon I plan to go get a glass of water.

ERRMMM--ILOVEYOUCHARLIE

If you haven't watched this yet, do so--immediately.

Clearly the best part is all the shit the analysts were talking at the beginning of the season. Ahhhh, so delicious. So satisfying. I'm getting pumped already.

Edit: It has been forcefully pointed out to me that I'm at least 2 months behind on this video. I guess it's ritual suicide again for me, tonight.

Austin to the Max

I'm thinking about changing the name to reflect the only thing I apparently write about any more. Also to make my mother's head explode. Auuuuustin...AUUUUUUSSSTIN! My mother is worried, you see, and not without justification, that I will end up moving to Austin. Hi, Mom! Happy Mother's Day.

It's senior week in the Bend, and so the cold and rain have descended upon us to make sweet, kinky love on the quads. You lose, seniors! It is very likely that one of my senior weeks was beautiful, possibly!

So I took a long weekend to head out once more to Austin and celebrate the end of Lizett's term as a 1L. Unfortunately my flight was absurdly early and I ended up getting there about 5 hours before she finished her last final, leaving me to wander the streets aimlessly looking bewildered. Mostly I was looking bewildered because it was like 80 degrees out and everyone around campus was wearing long pants. Several girls were wearing sweaters, and one guy was wearing a jacket. Freaking Texas! I will kill you! Anyway, I had to entertain myself for a few hours, so I decided it was high time I paid a visit to the Church of Scientology.

It was an enormous disappointment. I thought I would get some sort of zany story out of it, maybe run into one of the nation's dumber celebrities. Nothing. The building was kind of a shit hole, their chapel was a bunch of folding chairs in front of a shoddy podium, and there was nothing in the lobby but a single shelf filled with L. Ron Hubbard books. Isn't the entire point of your religion to make money? Where's the gold, baby? Where's the ostentation? I asked the clerk what he could tell me about Scientology, and he listlessly gestured to a TV from 1985 and said "Um, I can show you a video." A video? No presentation, no pitch? C'mon, I was dressed okay! I'm upwardly mobile! What's wrong with my money? Loooooooove meeeeeeeee!

So that killed all of 10 minutes. Fortunately there was a mall next door where I spotted some very gropy lesbians and chased them around for a while, hopping from foot to foot and rocking some jazz hands while I falsettoed "Leeeeeeeesbians!" If you've known me or Ball for more than a month, you're familiar with the dance. Then I hopped on to Chipotle, hit the bookstore (where they have a doorbell on their restrooms...freaking Texas! I will kill you!), wandered around the campus for a while (it's very nice), and finally headed to some restaurant where, in a bid to be the saddest human being on earth, I sat for an hour sipping coors light and flipping through a stack of old ratty trivial pursuit cards. When I could take no more I headed back to the Law School and resigned myself to watching TV for the last hour--I know I really missed the train on this one, but Judge Judy is a huge freaking bitch.

When the exam was over we headed over to a nearby bar for burgers and beers on some law firm. It was a cool place, and I am here to tell you that the only thing better than free beers after a final is free beers when you didn't even have to take a final. We took the bus home after becoming pleasantly soused and in what is becoming a disturbing trend blew off the rest of the evening's plans to go to bed--prepare yourself--at 9. Now to be fair, Lizett had just finished a week of finals and I had gotten up, Texas time, at 3am, but still--I hate us, and would have lost all respect for us if we had not then slept in the next day until almost 1. Now that, brothers, is some good sleeping.

Friday, well rested and ready to rumble, we headed out for a full day of eating, boozing, and general shenanigans. We hit some restaurant for lunch called Shady Grove or something and ate at the outdoor bar. And ate. And ate. Our relationship hit a new plateau when Lizett put the afternoon plans on hold to head back to sprawl on the couch and "moan and rub her belly" until the swelling went down. Sex. Ae. I've also discovered that she is now comfortable:

• belching
• saying "I hate you" often and enthusiatically
• eating crawdads
• discussing the ins and outs of drowning in your own poop

I could provide some context to allay the embarrassment-inducing awfulness of that last one, but instead I think I won't. You see, equivalently, I'm now comfortable wrecking her on the internet for no reason. Actually, I don't think you can so much call these developments a new plateau as a return to our previously enjoyed comfort level. Have you ever tried dating someone you've already been friends with for years? Man, the switchover is some awkward shiat. Anyway, the point is...something. We finally headed out after much digestion to play the most confusing round of frisbee golf of all time, and ended up quitting halfway through to get dinner at a Cajun place because it had a picture of a frog smoking a cigar out front (we could go to Ninfa's, they have good mexican food--WHOA! That place has a FROG smoking a CIGAR!!). It wasn't bad. Lizett ordered crawdads, which is the grossest thing I have ever seen--and we watched Hostel later that weekend. She might as well have been eating a big bowl of live roaches, or a human head. Either would have provided a similar gag reflex. We also ordered a huge fishbowl drink because it came with a tiny plastic alligator, which we named Allister, the Bathtime Fun Buddy.

Me: How's this drink?
Server: <retching> It's terrible.
Me: <eyeing the words 'plastic alligator'> We'll take it!

God, what an unnecessary level of detail. Time to wrap up! Friday night was the big par-tae, we headed out to a giant billiards club where there was supposedly a big tab for the law students--we got there about 15 minutes late, and it had long since been blown away. I think someone ordered a bucket of Cristal or something. Freaking Texas! It was a good time though. Everyone, being done with finals, was in a great mood, and I finally got to meet some of Lizett's friends.

Clearly that is us at the bar, and not 4 years ago at TC. Saturday we had some adventures involving a long hike, a drug deal, oreos and beer simultaneously, and a shark biting a dog, but clearly I'm done writing.

I Will Destroy You Wilmer Valderrama

Cut it out, you. That is by far the worst concept for a show I have ever seen. I would rather watch season 1 Simpsons episodes than a bunch of chumps off the street spouting ill prepared yo' mama jokes while you shout "OHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

In other TV news, Futurama might be coming back (speculation? I'll take it!) and it appears that Mr. T is getting his own talk show. "My show ain't no Dr. Phil, with people sitting around crying," he said. "You're a fool - that's what's wrong with you." Holy crap, I can't wait.

Lastly, there has been a weird rumor going around that "The King" is unbearably creepy, and while it is true that the very concept of waking up to that grinning maniac standing outside your window--or, God help you, in your bed--is enough to drive an otherwise sane man to go on a killing spree, I nevertheless contest that The King is freaking awesome, my personal savior, and the greatest thing to happen to television advertising since The Noid.

This was a lovely and relaxing weekend, starting with some hardcore movie watching--hardcore meaning plentiful--continuing with weekly Hacienda, onto a night of the best pool I've ever shot in my life--I still lost--and culminating in a Sunday of perfect weather, golf, and BBQing. At the BBQ everything was going along smoothly and then suddenly and without warning Ball and I started bickering, in front of God and everyone, about how long we'd been out of saran wrap--his contention was that we've only been out for two weeks, mine that we've been out for several months. Mother of God, we're a middle aged married couple. Seppuku.

Also! Click. Vote. Laugh until you pop.

Three day work week, I'm halfway through. Enjoy your hump day tomorrow, losers! I'll be enjoying mine.

VROOM, VROOM!

Tom Cruise, you magnificent son of a bitch! Prepare yourself for awkward hilarity such as you have never imagined:

It could not be clearer to me that at some point in Tom's life, someone said to him "Tom, if you ever find yourself expected to dance on BET, don't panic! Just pretend...you're riding...a motorcycle." I love the woman standing next to him, you can actually feel her feeling awkward for him. Haha, suck it Tom! And suck it Lizett, for clearly I have preemptively stolen this post from you.

Delicious Murder

Today I was going to write about my upcoming gynecological exam, sexual indiscretions, lack of pubic hirsuteness, and--of course--my painful menses...but alas! My friend Katie beat me to the punch.

Instead, please enjoy this scantily clad pirate monkey. PANTALOONS!

Summer of Activity

Last night, as we were consuming our thick, juicy steaks, loaded baked potatoes, hot buttered honey bread, salty bacon cheese fries, and tall frosty beers, Ball and I decided it's time to get healthy, and what better way than going back to our high school roots and picking up tennis again? And not just for the seemingly never ending supply of hot, hot, blazingly hot women that frequent the courts. I've just got the tennis bug. I used to play every day. Three buddies and I would play at least 2 or 3 sets in the afternoon, take a mario kart break, hit the frisbee golf course, and then more often than not head back to the courts for another match in the evening.

That all came to a fairly abrupt stop after the famous splitting-my-face-open-with-my-own-racquet fiasco of '99, tragically--I still played on occasion after that, but the frequency dropped off drastically and eventually my skills deteriorated to a level that made it impossible to participate in a competitive match with anyone over the age of 12. Fortunately the next summer I became a part-time tennis instructor at Columbus City Rec Centers, and whooped the shit out of a large number of people under the age of 12. They called me Mr. Steve, the "tennis pro." Haha, it was almost as awesome as the summer I spent as a swim instructor directly after failing the swim test at ND. "Show us the dolphin kick, Mr. Steve!" the wee children would say. "Haha!" I'd say as I doggie paddled by, "No refunds!" Anyway, I miss me some tennis, and I'm primed and ready to get back on the court. It's been...several years since I've played with any intensity, so we'll see how this goes.

In other activity news, I'm finally starting to ramp up my running and lifting again. Yes, I am going against the advice of everyone to ever exist by ramping up both at the same, from a standard of no activity whatsoever, thus dooming my body to some sort of catastrophic breakdown. This unfortunately means I have to ramp up my eating as well, lest I immediately die, which is unfortunate as a catastrophic breakdown of my financial management abilities has left me without food for the next couple weeks. SEND FOOD. Oh God, please send me some food.

TX III

Another weekend in Austin, another organ sold to finance it. This time I went with the lung, but joke's on them, I ditched the bad one. Enjoy the 50% likelihood of a recurring pneumothorax, fools! The theme for this weekend was Less TV, More Not TV, and although my desperate, tearful pleas to hit the frisbee golf course were staunchly ignored, we did take a nice outdoorsy trip to Mount Bonnell, a pleasant little elevated park with a sprawling view of Lake Austin. It was lovely, and certainly the highlight of the weekend. That's not true. The highlight was in the airport on the way back, when the woman behind me at the security checkpoint noticed a TSA agent wearing an "I *heart* Jesus" lanyard, placed a hand on her shoulder, and earnestly whispered "I love the Lord Jesus too." BAAAAAAAAAAAHH!

Back to Mount Bonnell, it overlooks the Obscenely Rich part of Austin, and checking out the elaborate houses complete with gazebos and courtyards was nearly as interesting as the rest of the view. It is henceforth my fondest wish to someday have such an excess of money that I can not only install an enormous swimming pool in my backyard, but do so 50 feet from a perfectly good lake.

The other Big Adventure was definitely going to see Stick It. Ha-ha! You thought I was kidding about that, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?? Nope, we did indeed go see a movie about a punked out rebellious gymnast on opening weekend, thus finally and decisively confirming the long-standing rumor that I am in fact an 11 year old girl only masquerading as a rugged man-beast. God save me, it was pretty good.

Speaking of life changes, which we weren't, it appears as if my time in South Bend is finally winding down. By now I am guessing the rumor mill has made its full rotation and most everyone has heard that there will be no wedding in June, but if you were wondering why your invite never came--there you go. Also I hate you. Anyway, without that key event, the Bend has lost a bit of its allure--I don't have immediate plans regarding a move, but I do intend to talk to my boss soon about the best time to leave and the best way to go about it. I like my job quite a bit, but I think I've already advanced about as far as I can without a masters--and with other plans recently changed, grad school is now an option much sooner than it would have been. Time to get my learn on!