I suppose it would be the ego.  Yes.  Definitely the ego.

So what’s been happening lately?  Work.  Lots and lots of work.  So much so that as soon as the day is done I pretty much don’t really want to see a keyboard.  Mice are ok.  Mice just point at things.  They don’t involve trying to put together a cohesive sentence, much less spell.

Outside of work?   Well, after a prolonged struggle that started with the end of my relationship with the Home Depot and ended with two stripped bolts we’ve installed an over-the-range microwave, which marks the first major upgrade in our microwaving capabilities in over six years.

It’s actually pretty sweet.

And the munchkin?  Every day she babbles a way, throwing in a word or two here and there.  She’s on the verge of walking on her own.  Every once in a while we convince her to take a few steps holding onto only one hand.

Oh.  And we got a bike seat for her.  It’s awesome.  It actually sits in front of you.  Today we biked all the way down the street.  Micah’s comment?  “Whee!”

So that’s life.  Tomorrow’s another day.

Flooding

(videos follow the jump)…

No, we’re not floating away.  Our home is located up the hill, so unless you see a guy constructing an Ark in the Midwest and gathering animals two-by-two, I don’t think we have a lot to worry about.

Janesville as a town, however, is experiencing what professionals call a Freaking Deluge.  This video was taken at the bridge downtown.  It’s hard to see, but there’s about two feet of free space between the surface of the water and the bridge itself.

As a further clarification, it’s not normally that close.

Micah in the pool:

Micah on the Phone:

Micah rocking away:

But last night the nominating process for the Democrats finally wrapped up with Obama surpassing the (new) magic number of delegates needed. 

Of course, Hillary hasn’t actually conceded yet.   Or really suspended her campaign.  Granted, her powerful surrogates are making noise about VP slots on the ticket (bad idea) and talking reconciliation, but no final definitive word that she wouldn’t try something on the floor of the convention.

Hurrah. 

Sadly, I wouldn’t put it past her to come up with some sort of reason not to really officially say that the race is over up until the convention. 

Got to love it.

This ensures that casual readers never really become devoted to the blog.  Saves me the effort of coming up with interesting things to talk about, or (more realistically) being interesting in general.

So I’ve been having problems with the site for a while now.  I think it’s time for me to do a fresh installation.  I’ve found that eventually with most pieces of software or operating systems, eventually you just need to reinstall in order to work out the bugs.  So that will probably occupy my time for the next few evenings.

The things I do to have fun.

Sometime midmorning I took a break from my work to wander out to the living room where she and Micah were playing.  She looked up at me from where she and Micah had been playing on the floor and said, “So how do you like Micah’s first tooth?”

“Her what?”

“She’s got a tooth.”

Totally blew me away.  Even AM hadn’t noticed.  We spent the next two days trying to sneek our fingers into our daughter’s mouth to get a glimpse or a feel for it.   My daughter was spectacularly uncooperative.

In the end we determined that AM’s mother was right:  Micah does have her first tooth.  Mostly.  I don’t think it’s quite errupted all the way just yet, but you can definitely feel it if Micah’s cooperating.

I have to tell you that this new development comes as a great relief to me.  My coworker’s child (who was born a week prior to Micah) has three teeth I think.  And we’ve kept meeting people who have children around Micah’s age whose teeth started coming in at like eight months.  Or nine.  Or whatever.

It’s silly, I know.  Teeth come in when they come in.  I’ve met people whose children hadn’t popped out their first tooth until sixteen months or later.

But still…I find myself becoming slightly competitive when I evaluate other people’s children.

After all, when you have perfection personified living under your roof eating cheerios every day, you’ve got to make sure that she stays ultimately perfect.

Ok, I’ll stop being ridiculous.

Just to warn you, it’s about 10 minutes of face smashing goodness.  It’s also 71 Megs, so it may take a while to run.  So if you’re bored and patient, you can click on the “More” button to get to the video:

My daughter is one year old.  Plus a few hours at this point.

Goodness.

I’ve gotta straighten things up around here, but I’m hoping to get back to the monthly letter business at some point tonight.

Hopefully.

Gallery continues to not work.  False alarm

I’d actually debated whether or not I was going to post this story.  On the one hand, there’s the potential for completely humilating my father, whom I love in a public space viewed by literally tens of people.

On the other hand, it’s quite funny and it wasn’t my fault.

So Micah’s first birthday is (too) rapidly approaching and AM & I decided that in order to keep things simple, we’d actaully have her one year old photos done a week or so early.  Off we went to Sears, where we had had our four month pictures done.

The last time we had Micah’s picture taken, we ended up devoting a large portion of our package to pictures that would go out to relatives, most notably our respective parents.  However, I couldn’t remember what size photo we had standardized on.  Maybe it was a 4×6 and some wallet size.  Maybe it was a 5×7.  So I decided to call around…just to make sure that frames could be reused should parental units choose to do so.

The first person I called was my mother.

“Hi Mom.  We’re going to Micah’s one year photo appointment.  What size picture do you want?  What size did we get you last time?”

“Last time?”

“You know…Micah’s four month picture?”

“You never got me a four month picture.  I know that your sister got a wallet size.  I got the little picture book over the holidays.  But neither I nor your grandparents got photos.”

“No mom, I swear we got you pictures.  I thought we sent them up to you with dad and Nancy…”

“Well, I never got them…”

“Ok, well…I’ve gotta go.  I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

After a hurried conversation with AM, we both remember our intention to send out pictures.  It was so vivid.  We had had the pictures taken.  Dad and Nancy visited us at some point in September.  We had intended that they take the pictures with them as they were going to see my sister and my mother before we would and we didn’t want the pictures to get ruined by the mail.

I’d had good intentions go bad too often in my past to seek to blame my father.  I’d be just like me to make this elaborate plan and then fail to enact it once the time came.  It could be that I screwed up.  It could be that I never actually gave the pictures to my father.

It could be my fault.

I tried to call my father twice that morning.  Both times I went to voicemail.  In the mean time, we’d spoken with AM’s mother, and she had given us the general guidelines on what she’d wanted based on the pictures that she had actually received last time.

Finally, after the photoshoot, I get a hold of my father.

“Your mother isn’t speaking to me.”

“What?  Why?”

“Well, she called me a few moments ago, and she opened with:  ‘Dan and AM are getting Micah’s pictures taken for her first birthday.  And he said…’  She didn’t even have to finish the sentence.  I knew what she was calling about.”

“So…we did give you the pictures?”

“Yup….and we never delivered them.  In fact, I think they’ve probably gone back and forth between Georgia and New Jersey a number of times since then.”

Of course my mother tells a slightly different tale.  Hers mostly matches up, but according to her my father started to catch onto the upcoming question the moment she mentioned the one year picture session and before she started in the ‘So Daniel tells me something interesting…’ routine.

Either way, I just about busted a gut.  To make matters worse, this whole thing played out in front of my sister.  And by now my grandparents know as well.

Yup.  You’re screwed Dad.  But at least it was really really funny.

And now it’s pretty much hosed.

Go me.  This may be the end of hosted galleries on my site.  I haven’t decided yet.