Making Chili

When we were at the Denver Green Festival, I picked up a couple delicious things from the Women’s Bean Project.  This is an awesome project.  I got a bag of chocolate covered coffee beans.  I also got a chili kit.  It’s several types of beans and a packet of spices.  Just add meat, onion, green pepper, and tomato.  The chocolate beans were terrific.  And today I started making chili.  Well, yesterday, actually, as the beans needed to soak overnight.

For meat, we have some amazing ground mule deer meat (venison burger?) which was bagged by one of my friends at work.  Very fresh.  And very generous of him.  So deer chili.  Right on.

So I learned something today.

Beans Take For-Freaking-EVER to cook.

Cleaning This $#!% Up: Day …something

I’m still cleaning!

I’m still keeping resolutions!

I’m still cooking!

Ok, yesterday was a copout day.  But I was justified.  My amazing wife made TUNA STEAKS.  It was really delicious, and there were leftovers to take to work today!  Definitely happy about that.  I did a little bit of cleaning, but it was a lazy night.  Still enough that I get to mark the calendar with that big red X.  Heck yeah.

Today, I rocked it in a pretty random style.  I went through most of the dry goods.  We have a lovely island in the kitchen and 3 cabinets of that are dry goods.  There is an array of drawers that contain lots of things.  The cabinets were inventoried and organized.  One drawer was crammed with anything I considered “snacks” like seeds and dried fruits and bars.  (Nuts we have WAY too many of, so even though they’re quite snacky, they didn’t go into that drawer.)  The tea drawer was also neglected.  I’m at peace with that.  Need to make a point to go through the snack drawer and just EAT the stuff.  Inventory doesn’t much matter.  Just take some to work (once I finish the pistachios that are already there!)

Things found:

• Grains (rice, quinoa, polenta)
• Legumes (black beans, chickpeas, black eyed peas, and lentils)
• Nuts (almonds, walnuts, pecans, pistachios, pine nuts, deez)
• Cans (tart cherries, coconut milk, coconut milk, coconut milk, garbanzo beans)
• Jars (chai, Ovaltine, malted milk, strawberry preserves)
• Bottles (Orange blossom water, orange flower water, Martinelli sparkling cider, white balsamic vinegar, olive oil)
• Tins (sardines, sardines, sardines)
• Pasta (spinach penne, soba noodles, udon noodles, Kraft mac & cheese)
• Sweeteners (beet sugar, crystalline fructose, turbinado sugar, agave syrup, maple sugar, maple syrup, honey, honey, honey, raspberry honey, creamed honey, mesquite honey, palm sugar)
• Baking stuff (organic cocoa powder, baking chocolate, baking soda, baking powder, yeast packets)

The variety if sweeteners is funny.  Since my wife is allergic to cane sugar, we try a variety of things (like the fructose and palm sugar).  Beet sugar, when we can find it, is the best and easiest replacement, but she honestly doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth.  So this stuff lasts forever.  All the honey is a different story.  It’s our travel souvenir.  The mesquite honey came from Sedona, AZ.  One jar is from Georgia.  I forget where the raspberry honey came from.  It’s from north Florida or something.

As for food preparation, I did a few random things tonight.  Small salad and a bowl of yogurt (with slivered almonds and agave nectar).  Not a decent meal, but whatever.  I MADE FOOD.  I even suggested things.  Which means I’m thinking.  It helps a LOT to know what we have.

So this is all a great process.  This post needs rewritten and then thoroughly edited.  But I’m tired.  Good night.  I’m going out for lunch tomorrow.  Deal with it.  ;D

Kitchen Blast Day 2: Not Much Extraveganza!!!

Got home a little late.  Hung out with a couple friends for an hour.  Skipped dinner, basically.  Got home.  Did some dishes, and thought about ordering pizza or running for Taco Bell.

Better than fast food, though, I decided to cook.  Not much better, because I’m making a box of Mac & Cheese.  With broccoli, for what that’s worth.

I DID get another 1/3 of the way through the dishes, which feels good.  And I AM actually cooking, which despite everything, feels good.  Jerry Seinfeld’s productivity hack is to draw a red X on a calendar for each day that he writes.  The chain it creates motivates him to keep it going.  You better believe that he’s writing crap some of those days.  So I’ll use that as justification for making crap today.  ;)  And this marks the creation of a new goal.

Make Food Every Day

It won’t always be a solid gold meal.  Heck, it won’t always be a meal.  But I will make something.  It may be a loaf of bread, some cookies, a full meal, or a side dish.  It may be a salad or simply a tasty embellishment of some leftovers.  Either way, it will be making food.

Back to business tomorrow.  No other evening plans.  I will clean the fridge or the island cabinets (not both.  I’m not a machine.)  And I will make dinner.  No idea what.  :)

New Habits: Kitchen & Diet

Disclaimer: As always, I have some caveat with language. Diet is a word that has been maliciously co-opted by people with low self-esteem trying to sell books to people with low self-image. I am reclaiming the word diet, which means “The stuff you eat.” Good and bad. Diet means the same thing in our house that it means on National Geographic.

Yesterday, my wife read to me the basics of a brilliant post by Sarah Welch.
January Challenge: Waste Less Food
It’s brilliant, and totally in line with several goals that we have. So we are jumping on the bandwagon, and I am leading the charge (with several of my own, individual goals)!

Our January Challenge

• Waste less food (us)
• Clean up the kitchen (me)
• Adopt a slower-food lifestyle (us)
• Reduce the consumption of artificial ingredients (us)
• Become a comfortable caretaker – which means comfortable cooking! (me)
• Bring lunch to work, instead of spending so much $$ (me)

My wife already eats better than I do. She is already comfortable in the kitchen. She is already a completely amazing cook. She is also pregnant, as you know, so I am stepping up and doing my part to provide for her.

Waste Less Food

I need to create more clearly defined goals for this, but the immediate goals are clear and simple.

• Inventory all the food we have
• Throw out anything that’s already spoiled
• Consume everything that will spoil soon
• Donate anything we should not or will not eat
• Be mindful of what we buy

There is a certain mystery to our current food inventory.  Last night, I went through the freezer, gutted it of everything in there, washed it out, and then we inventoried the food as I replaced it.  The list is insane.  I had no idea that much of that stuff was in there.  This tells me I’m not paying enough attention.  I need to play a much more active role in the kitchen.  Only a couple things got thrown out in this cleaning.  A couple other things were moved to the fridge for consumption this week.  (I had some of them for breakfast today!)  The rest were reorganized a bit so they’ll be easier to find.  Dairy together.  Meat together.  Grains together.  Veggies together.  Fruits together.  Everybody went into one group or another.

This process will be repeated tonight on the fridge.  The entire kitchen will be inventoried by the end of the week.  I will use those lists to create menus.

Clean Up the Kitchen

Going through the food is part of cleaning up the kitchen.  Dishes, cabinets, counters, floors, window sill and walls make up the rest.  We have more stuff than we use, and we could use more stuff than we have.  Some glasses can be moved to storage (to bring out after we break another, later on).  A pressure cooker would be nice, though.  Maybe a slow cooker or crock pot would be good to have, too.

At the very least, I suck at staying on top of the dishes, and need to fix that immediately.

Slow Food Lifestyle

Slow Food is a concept created in Italy that has since spread throughout the world.  It is an attempt to return to a slower, simpler time, before food companies employed vast numbers of chemists, before “mouth-feel” was used to describe the residue left by artificially altered lipids.  (Like you get from cheap donuts.  You know what I’m talking about.)

Specifically, my goal is to learn to make foods from scratch.  Generally speaking, this will accomplish MANY goals:

• Eat higher quality ingredients
• Eliminate artificial colors and flavors
• Eliminate artificial ingredients (hydrogenated oils, chemicals, etc)
• Learn to cook
• Learn to use raw ingredients

I’m not sure what food it was, but I know that at some point in my relationship with my wife, she was talking about making something and it had never occurred to me before that people MAKE it.  I thought we just BOUGHT it.  It was a big a-ha moment.  It wasn’t pasta – I knew how to make that – but it’s the best example I can think of right now, so let’s go with that.

Do you know how to make pasta?  Do you know that it can be done without a machine?  All you need is pasta, water, and maybe egg, as well as something long and round (to roll it out).  That’s literally it.  It’s not particularly time consuming.  It requires far less packaging.  It’s actually FUN to make.  I never made pasta before I met Kia.  I’ve still never made bread.  That’s my next goal, once the kitchen is clean.

Comfortable Caretaker

My wife has pointed out (sympathetically, not with harshness) that I’m really not a natural caregiver.  Protective, yes.  Caring, yes.  Compassionate, too.  But when it comes to having an ill spouse, I have very little clue what to do.  Feed a cold, starve a fever?  What won’t upset her tummy?  Let her sleep?  I just don’t know.

Well, I’ve gotten better over the last few years.  Incrementally, not exponentially, but improvement is improvement.  And it’s a trend I want to continue.  Maybe exponentially.  So cooking would be a heck of a start, right?

Two things: Bread and Soup.  In that order.  I’m going to learn how to make them.  And it’s winter, so it’s PERFECT.  Bread will warm the house and make it smell wonderful.  Soup is warming, filling, and hearty.  Terrific.  We’ll be dining in a winter wonderland.

Soon, I will be caring for mother and baby.  If I can’t take care of mother NOW, how will I ALSO be able to take care of baby THEN?  Yeah, I gotta get on this.

Take it home, daddy!

I’m going to do all this.  The house will look amazing.  I will be amazing.  My wife will be amazed.  In summary:

Clean Home
Nourished Wife
Badass Me

Happy Everybody

The New Age of Privacy

This is a remarkably tired subject.  In fact, I’m surprised that’s not a more tired phrase.  “The New Age of Privacy,” I mean.  I googled it and found only nine hits.  The first is a post on a political blog.  The others are just pages that contain the phrase.  So I am only #10 on the topic.  Given how gigantic the Internet is, well, I’m just shocked.

Location

The world is shrinking.  Between our myriad forms of communication and the advanced methods of travel we have come up with, there is a ridiculous number of people across vast distance that we have the opportunity to interact with.  Thus people have surprisingly easy access to our information.  This is as true in the real world as it is in the virtual realm.  With the ready availability of so much information, much of which is personal, a great many privacy concerns come to light.

Babies

This is a hot topic for my wife and I right now, as we are awaiting the arrival of our first child.  Fortunately, storks fly slowly enough that we still have a few months.  There is a lot to prepare for, both physically and mentally. Babies get stolen and swapped.  (The last episode of Castle (the one on ABC with Nathan Fillion) dealt with this, in fact.)  Children get kidnapped.  (There’s a movie coming out about this, and the ads are all over TV right now.)  If you were interested in doing such a thing, there is an overabundance of information available to you.  You don’t even need to work at the child’s hospital or school.  And in this case, the onus of security and privacy is on the parents.  All the horrifying worst-case-scenarios aside, though, there are rational concerns and rational precautions to allay those concerns.

The Registry

I was looking up an old friend (with a reasonably common name) recently, and found several possible hits on him.  There was limited information, but a photo of a baby came up.  After looking for his wife and finding the same photo, I knew I’d found them.  So I learned they have a kid.  A little more searching turned up the child’s name, three baby registries, the expected date of birth, and a few more things.  Is that more than I should know about this child?  Is that more than someone else should know about the child?  My intentions are good, of course.  I reached out to this friend in the hopes of reconnecting.  If I don’t hear back, I at least congratulated them on the addition to their beautiful family.  And there it ends.  But this information is available for others.  Should it be?  I can’t answer that for them, but I know that in my case, it should not be.  And so I shall be more careful with our child’s information.

The Ultrasound and Facebook

Our first ultrasound is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in my life, and I was excited to share it with my friends.  But not the entire internet.  So I posted it to Facebook.  My default image security is friends only, or maybe friends of friends.

But when I checked up on it later (after that whole Facebook privacy situation), I saw that it was available to Everyone.  (Coincidence?  Subversion?  I don’t know.)  Now, I’m a fairly savvy Internet user.  Social media and privacy are not big scary concepts to me.  This should not have happened.  But it did.  So I took the photo down along with everything else (except my profile image).

The good news is that our ultrasound contains absolutely no personal information.  I could technically put it on a billboard in Times Square with no consequence.  But go do a search for ultrasounds on Flickr and you will find that many contain the patient’s name, the doctor’s name, sometimes the date of birth and location.  A combination of these things makes you personally identifiable.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want our child’s information to be personally identifiable.

The Airport

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

After the shoe bomber, the TSA began to require everyone remove their shoes in security.  We all thought that was a total pain in the neck.  Then came the underwear bomber.  We don’t even need to ask what comes next.

The Real World exceeds the scope of this post, but I’m just going crazy with all the news of these full body scanners.  I won’t get started on it all, but if you’re thinking about privacy, don’t limit your thoughts to the online world.

The Virtue of Forgetting

Once upon a time, people made asses of themselves.  They could win a few gold medals and then take a few pulls off a bong at a party.  Maybe it was a dumb move.  Maybe it made them a poor role model.  But after nobody found out about it … well, nobody found out about it.  This accessibility that makes our lives so much more rich also makes our lives so much more available.

Once upon a time, a famous actor (or an actor who wasn’t yet very famous at all) could do a little film that was maybe a little risqué, or they could play with a gerbil at a party, and it was no big deal.  Maybe a few people would find out, but it’s not like it would become a worldwide joke and something they could never fully escape.  Today, this isn’t so much the case.

There are lesser examples of silliness that follow us around.  One bad post.  One poor choice.  One stolen or leaked photo can haunt us forever.  That video you shot of you jamming around an empty room with a curtain rod, like you were Darth Maul?  Once upon a time, that would be a funny embarrassment.  Now it’s a meme.  Now it’s saved on thousands or millions of hard drives out there.  Sorry.  It can’t be undone.

If you don’t already see the virtue of forgetting … of letting our immature mistakes die with that level of immaturity … I don’t know what more to say.  VERY few things should last forever.  VERY few things should be available to EVERYONE.  I, myself, have not produced a single thing that qualifies for either of these honors.

Answers

It’s easy to write a post that asks questions, and the questions are valuable things for you to consider.  Talk to your significant others, be they family or friend.  Ponder it and see what thoughts turn up.

Without letting me deter you from any of the brilliant things your thoughts and conversations will produce, please allow me to suggest some solutions …or improvements, at least.

Publish Thoughtfully

In our younger years, we may publish some pretty silly things.  Livejournal is a delightfully tragic repository of such things.  As we become more wise, we develop a better filter.  Use this filter to prevent things from ending up where they don’t belong.  If you don’t want that photo on a stranger’s hard drive, don’t put it on the Internet.  Yes, the bikini looks terrific.  Carry a photo around so you can show it off to your friends, instead.  And I’m sure your carefully considered rant about your neighbor is delicious gossip, save it for your next café chat or euchre game.  The Internet does not need to know.

Remember How To Forget

Not everything needs to last forever.  Like those drawings I made my parents in grade school.  Thank goodness they found their way to some landfill back in Indiana.  Remember when you only took maybe 4 photos in the average month?  So many things forgotten … and most of it is just as well forgotten.  Well, feel free to take 400 photos next month, but consider deleting the 396 that you really will not want to look at in another decade.  It will make those 4 that much more special, and that much easier to find.  And if you share them, do so thoughtfully.

Help Your Friends

Not everyone is a Social Media Guru by birth.  Some people are good at real life, instead.  This virtual landscape can be a bit intimidating.  If you know someone having trouble keeping their business to themselves, help them out.  Show them how their information could be used in a less-than-ideal way.  Show them how they are compromising their security.  Once they are properly motivated toward being smart about it, help them learn how.

Conclusion

We want to be blissful optimists, thinking the best of people and expecting the best of life.  Life requires a balance between this delightful optimism and the necessary realism.  With that in mind, we will do well to consider the audience before we allow ANYTHING private out into the wilds of the Internet.  Just as we consider a friend’s ability to keep a secret before sharing gossip or news, we must consider the Internet’s tendency to exaggerate, remove from context, and preserve.

Whether it’s your cake-smeared child’s first birthday photo or your bank account, the imprudent handling of information can come back to haunt us.

#Best09 Project

Preface

Gwen Bell is an amazing woman that I met locally.  She is building something of a social media empire, is influential, and all those other things that make a person look impressive to others.  But first and foremost, far and above all that stuff, she is a wonderful, warm, attentive, and present person.  The few times I have been fortunate enough to spend time with her have all been packed with excellent conversation and smiling faces.

This month, she kicked off an initiative to get people to reflect on the year, with specific daily prompts that are just brilliant.  I am not much for retrospect, especially in a ranked sort of way.  This is partly due to my crap memory, partly to my fear of leaving out something significant and important (due to that crap memory), and partly to a relative inability to actually rank things.  Seriously.

But today’s prompt is easy.

What did you start this year that you’re proud of?

A baby.

Really, that could have been the whole post.  What else needs to be said?  But I’m me, so I’ll go on.

I am 34.  (My wife is a timeless, ageless beauty, which cannot be contained within or described by a number, so don’t ask.)  We are both mature people who, like everyone, have problems, but unlike our younger selves, have worked through the most threatening and devatstating ones.  We are entilligant [sic] people who are reasonably well educated and prefer to continue educating ourselves.  We began learning about pregnancy, gestation, and birth before we started “trying”.

In a nutshell: To the very best of our abilities, both separate and combined, we are fully preparing ourselves, our lives, our hearts, and our home for this child.  To the very best of our abilities, we are doing it right.

And it is that concentrated effort that makes me so proud.

A Father’s Envy, Part I: Breastfeeding

Disclaimer: My wife has been pregnant with our first child for 13 weeks.  Only 13 weeks.  So I am not yet a father.  You would do well to keep in mind that I am speaking from the perspective of anticipation, and NOT from that of experience.  Dig?  Disclaimers can be so annoying.  Glad that’s out of the way.

If you do not read this post, at least click the link towards the end of it.  It’s a much better post than mine.

Mother’s Role in Pregnancy and Birth

The connection that a mother shares with a child is, at its very essence, biological.  The child comes to exist within the mother’s body, enters the world from the mothers body, and is then nourished by the mother’s body.  She creates the child within her, and the child changes her through its growth.  Hormones are induced and produced that profoundly affect both creatures.

Father’s Role in Pregnancy and Birth

Me, I get to bring her water and tissues.  Wish her well, stroke her forehead, and watch helplessly as she cries through the profoundly beautiful pain of childbirth.  I am a feeble bystander in the most profound thing that has ever happened to either of them.

Postpartum (Breastfeeding – with a lengthy disclaimer)

And then, once the child has entered the world, I will remain an innocent bystander in the nourishment of the child.  (It’s worth note that we are the type of couple who believes in breast feeding, and are against formula in all situations and scenarios except where it’s absolutely necessary.  That said, we neither scold nor judge those who disagree with us.  Like vegans who are cool with you eating a burger.  If that makes sense.  This is apparently a contentious topic among mothers.  So you should know how we feel.)

I’m not making a big deal about it, because it’s not a big deal.  It’s just a natural truth of the world.  And I’m to understand that most fathers are cool with this.  I don’t know if I believe that.  Maybe they are OK with it.  Or maybe they’re better at pretending they are.  Either way, I feel deeply and profoundly excluded from this process.  I envy that connection (not the pain, no, but the connection, yes).  I don’t hold this against anyone.  Can I reiterate that fully enough?  It’s just how things work.  I accept that and am deeply honored by the role that I do play in all this.

Is Envy a Fair Word?

Fathers are not able to bond with their children in the same ways that mothers are.  But some have tried.  Have you seen the nursing bra for men?  It’s the next step of creepiness after the sympathy belly.  There exists “bra” made of fake breasts that men can wear and babies can nurse on.  It’s like creepiest point between a baby bottle and a Camelbak.  I’m not planning to take my fathering anywhere near that thing, but I was under the idea that a breast pump and bottle were better than nothing.  I would at least be able to feed the baby myself.

The Brilliant Post

And then I read this:  How New Dads Can Bond With Their Breastfeeding Baby

This is a brilliant post (which nearly brought a few tears to my eyes).  And suddenly, I felt so reassured about bonding with my child next summer.

Thank you, Melodie.

People Will Be Crazy

One thing I knew before our child was conceived is that people will be crazy.  There are two life events that just seem to be extreme supermagnets for the crazy: Weddings and Pregnancy.  Why?  I don’t know.  I throw it in with the holidays, honestly.  People get crazy around the holidays.  Every year.  Never fails.  Why?

The Culprit is Should

Alright, there’s also envy, judgment, and all sorts of other emotions, but it all comes down to should.  Someone else should have what you have.  You should do things a certain way.  There’s this great weight, both around the holidays, and around these great life events (and by great, in this sentence, I mean mighty) – this pressure of perfection.  This massive need people feel to create the atmosphere that should exist and feel the way they should feel and for everyone to act the way they should act.  But I reject these things.

We reject these things.  We rejected them for the holidays, for ever year of our relationship (except for one Thanksgiving, when we gave in to should and all the disaster that can come with it).  We rejected them wholeheartedly for our wedding, and could not be happier with the result.  We will reject them throughout this pregnancy and once the child is born.  Our baby will be defended against and protected from this shouldness.  And until then, I shall protect my wife from it.  Fiercely.

Walking Blessing; Guarded Blessing

My wife is a walking blessing right now.  She was informed of this at the apothecary where we procured herbs to make her a calming tea.  She may have already known this, but the term was new to me.  She blessed the apothecary through the purchase of the herbs, and through the tea that she drank there.  By allowing them to nourish her, she blessed them.  This, to me, is a beautiful statement.  This is also an example of people treating my wife as she should be treated.  With respect.  Without crazy.

I am not a walking blessing.  You can say “we’re” pregnant all you want, but my body is unchanged.  Somehow, somewhere, in a dark corner of my mind, though, a new fire is lit.  And it is fierce.  I am awed by how alert I am in her presence.  My mind focuses on unexpected sounds or motions.  Some protective instinct has engaged itself within me.  I’m feeling a little reactive.

Handling Crazy

People will bring the crazy into our lives.  There have already been hints of the craziness to come.  There are people who have not been informed of the pregnancy because their crazy is assured.  And a little bit of crazy has already been brought.  I want to say I don’t mean to come off as threatening, but if anyone requires a threat to keep their own crazy at bay, then I will immediately oblige.

The Real Should

So these are the rules.

• You should not send us any negativity.
  This means you should not judge us, envy us, wish us ill, disrespect us, or anything of that sort.
• You should offer whatever you would like to offer, be it wisdom, assistance, or just warmth.
  Wisdom, it must be noted, is vastly different from judgment.  If you NEED to judge, do it behind our backs, and make sure we don’t hear about it.  Fair? And before you deliver it, make sure your wisdom is free of any of the aforementioned negativity.  If you feel you have nothing to share, then trust me: your warmth is appreciated as much as or more than anything else.
• You should not be pushy.  With anything.  This reiterates the previous point because I’m that serious.
• You should not offer more than is convenient for you.
  This runs the risk of creating stress, which can be interpreted as crazy.  Stress is to be avoided.  As much as you want to give/do/help, remember that your warmth is enough.
• You should respect my wife.  This is a gigantic bullet point.  Made with a gigantic bullet.
• You should respect me, but only because disrespecting me is disrespecting my wife.  Seriously.
  See the judgment thing.  If you gotta do it, do it behind our backs.  :)
• You should not impose your will.  This is the same as being pushy.  Let us do things our way.  Let us make our own mistakes.  Let us fail, if we will, in our own way.  Another reiteration of the same point.  I really am serious.

Warmth Will Be Returned

We have our own rules, you know.  You’re not the only one trying to be good here.

• We should not send you any negativity.
• We should accept your precious gifts with appreciation and without judgment.
  And if we do judge you, you’ll never hear about it.  ;D
• We should not be pushy.  With anything.  Our own way is our own way, and your own way is your own way.  Both are equally valid.  We’ll let each other know if we want one another’s insight.  :)
• We should ask you if we need anything, but not unless we need it, and not more than you can offer.
  Because this should never result in any stress.
• Kia should respect you.  And she will.
  But she’s also got some crazy hormones going on in her body.  So it may not look like she’s being respectful 100% of the time, but she is.  Because that’s the kind of person she is.  I need to remember this, too.
• I should respect you.  And I will.  Even as I protect my wife.
• we should not impose our will.  Our way … your way … it’s all good.  Mutual respect.

Conclusion

By and large, people have been truly excellent to us.  We are overwhelmed by how much warmth the people of Colorado have shown us, even in the VERY short time we have been living here.  We discuss this fact almost daily.  We appreciate you all.  We respect you.  We thank you.

And we love you.

The Tremendous News

Yesterday was the beginning of week 12, roughly the start of the 2nd trimester, and around the beginning of the “acceptable” or “advisable” or “whatever” time to begin informing friends and acquaintances of the tremendous news.  And so we are.

Last night was the Metal Moustache party at Rackhouse Pub in Denver.  We were celebrating the end of No Shave November and Movember.  You can read more about it on Matt Bernier’s blog.  It was at this party that we ran into many of our good real-life-from-online friends.  That is to say, the people we met through Twitter and such, but are now friends with in the real world as well.  This is significant because we wanted to tell them in person.

The rest of you, well, we apologize, but we’ve waited quite long enough and the silence has been tough.  So you had to find out this way.  We’re also bummed we didn’t see you at the party.  It was a wonderful time.  We WILL be at Ignite Boulder next week, though, and would love to see you there.

Clothes Shopping

I’m slacking on the posts.  It’s been a busy time. (and also I’m easily distracted)

Several days ago, we were doing a little shopping at the thrift store.  My wife was looking for maternity clothes, and we were just generally shopping for whatever nice, inexpensive things we could find.  We ended up in the baby clothes and my wife (a far better thrifter than myself) discovered some amazing little outfits.  So we bought them.

Baby Clothes (Photo credit: My wife)

2 Homemade knit veggie caps
Top with some French word on the tag
Gymboree pants
Patagonia long sleeve capilene onesie
Calvin Klein overalls
Petit Bateau … footie thing

So obviously, we know it’s going to be a girl, right?  NO.

The way I see it… if I can wear a pink top, so can my son.  But we don’t know if it’s going to be a boy, either.

Either way, we got some adorable little clothes for not much money.  We’re very excited to stuff a baby into them one month in the not-so-distant future.