My eyes burn with the fury of a thousand suns. It is late, I attempted to run more and faster today, but it's left my body in a state. Tomorrow, I'll need to be cogent while Kayla picks her parents up from the airport and I watch the wee baby at home.

What I'm trying to say is "I'm tired and I want easy content". One minute blog challenge it is. Actually, let's make it two minutes. Typing is slow. Here we go.

Writing a daily blog is a tiresome thing, especially when you're trying to do anything that has meaning and flow. My writing style tends to be very stream of consciousness, with very little in the way of pre-planning. This is probably self-evident if you read anything I write. There's some flow to it, but I'm easily distracted. Honestly, I approach a lot of things in life like this. When I'm working on a problem at work, I tend to do nothing for a long time, staring out the window and chewing through the bigger details in my mind. Then I kind of write everything in a blind fury, filling in the details as I go until I hit a problem that hadn't occurred to me. So... I don't know what any of this has about blogging dail-

And there it is. I'm going to do that thing about putting the baby down I talked about yesterday and hopefully get another 5-6 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

When you see a hyperbolic question posed in the title of an article, it should be assumed the answer is "no". But, what my theory presupposes is perhaps the answer is... maybe?

By far the most resounding joke made to and about new parents centers around sleep deprivation, and with good reason. Whether your new human is constantly fussy or just needs to be fed every two or three hours, a normal adult sleep schedule is going to be interrupted. Instead of relying on multiple hours of continuous uninterrupted sleep, get used to sleep in shorter bursts whenever you can get it. This hasn't been untrue in our case, but I feel like we've definitely gotten the easier end of the stick. Me especially since I've volunteered for the night shift.

It's morning as I write this, and we've exited a what's become (and is currently) a fairly typical night. The routine starts around 10-11p, where the TV is turned off and we begin migrating towards the bedroom. The variability is generally centered around waiting for the wee babes to get hungry or for us to finish watching whatever we're watching; I'm not going to be beholding to a particular arrangement of the clock hands. Once the move is made, a bottle is made and begins warming as I do a diaper change and stuff the kiddo into a swaddle. Moving to our bedroom, we've turned off all but one lamp that's set to a dim red and flipped on rain sounds. (I don't know if he actually cares about the rain sounds, but I like it; I often have rain sounds playing behind my music as I work). There, he'll be fed the bottle until he stops eating and passes out, usually making it about half way through. Once he's been calm for what seems like long enough, I put him in the pack and play bassinet that's next to our bed.

And wait.

About five minutes later, he'll wake up and start fussing, just a bit. The rest of the unfinished bottle is administered and he gets some tummy time on the soft bed that is my very hair chest. Again, once he seems calm enough, I put him back down in the bassinet.

Mission accomplished.

At that point, he'll sleep upwards of six hours with a fifty percent chance of needing a quick twenty minute feeding session in between. It's a pretty great way to be, though the feed-put-down-wake-up-feed-put-down ritual gives me some anxiety. Like, what if I put him down the second time and he doesn't stay down? What if he fights it?

That kind of leads into the second way that he's "the best baby", because sleep isn't the only part of that equation. Since birth until now (and, if we're lucky, it holds true going forward), he's been a very needs oriented complainer. Meaning, he really doesn't fuss unless he actively needs something, and that something is a bottle nine times out of ten. It was entertaining being the parents in the mother/baby ward sandwiched between two rooms where you heard babies constantly screaming and ours was just super chill. There was one night that was a little worse than the others, but again, that's for a different post. All told, if he's not in distress, he's either sleeping or a happy baby soaking in the wonder of life outside the womb. And that's pretty damn cool.

So, do we have the best baby? No. The best baby is all of the above while organizing food drives for those in need and fighting for trans rights.

But we have a pretty damn good baby.

In observance of all this happening eight weeks ago, let's continue that three part series.

Writing about the act of getting the wee baby out of my wife and into the world is a little more straight forward than any amount of waxing philisophical about taking care of a pregnant wife and/or post-pregnant wife + baby. It's merely a story. Kayla has suggested a few places on where to start the tale, but perhaps it should start at her last OB appointment where active measures were taken to start the whole process. Whether or not those measures actually did anything, we also took matters into our own hands in a couple ways.

The first way was Kayla's investment in a yoga ball and chilling out on that, trying to open up all the pathways in the hopes that he'd just slip out. The second way (and my favorite) was the introduction of "get the baby out" walks. There are a couple of really good spots for walking a very short drive from home, so we'd go out there in the evening and Kayla would waddle a mile plus in the hopes of making him slip out. The last of these we went on was a particularly gnarly hike that had a fair amount of verticality.

The wee baby kicked his bubble open the next morning.

Continue Reading

Fine, I'll take the loss on the 19th instead of doing revisionist history. I'll write an extra post on September 1st to make up.

I'm currently in a real conundrum with all those berries I bought at the beginning of the week. Early on in the week, I ran out of mojito ingredients (namely, mint and lime) and then I was alone with the wee baby for a couple days (post on that soon), so haven't really had an opportunity to enjoy those. In an effort to use those berries up before the go bad, I'm currently running a small experiment: which clear alcohol with soda and a mash of black-, blue-, and raspberries? Let's find out.

This is one of the drinks. But also all of them.

The Process

The recipe for this drink is pretty simple:

1. Grab a fistful of farmers marketplace blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries and shove them in a tall glass.

2. Add 1oz of clear alcohol. For this test, I'm testing vodka, gin, and white rum.

3. Muddle the berries into the alcohol.

4. Fill the glass with ice and top with club soda.

The Results

Overall, this is a pretty light and refreshing drink, but each alcohol is bringing it's own thing to the table.

Vodka (Tito's) - I'm not a huge fan of Tito's, but I had some leftover from friends visiting in April so figured this would be a good application to blow it on. Honestly, there was no real alcohol taste, which I suppose is what you'd expect from a good vodka. It was like drunky chunky berry LaCroix with a tiny bit of buzz. Not bad.

Gin (Kirkland Signature London Dry) - I picked up this cheap bottle of gin from Costco during that same friend visit situation and... I actively don't like it. Same situation as above, figured I'd blow it on a dumb experiment. On first taste, you can definitely pick out the juniper and it's not playing with the berries super well. By the bottom of the glass, it was fine.

Rum (Bacardi White Rum) - Rounding out the lower tier alcohols is Bacardi, another alcohol I've soured on since having something much better (I'm sorry I betrayed you, Koloa). There's definitely an extra taste here that wasn't present in the vodka version, but I can't put my finger on it. It's fine.

Conclusion

None of these are stellar drinks, but if I had to pick one as a winner, it'd be the Tito's vodka. I'd like to try this setup using alcohols that are actually good, as I'm sure these lesser versions are dragging down the scores, but I don't feel like being six shots of booze buzzed right now. Also, as somebody who's not partial to soda water in general, there may not be any saving these cocktails.

Now, add a bunch of sugar and we'll talk.

One of the more interesting developments of 2022 was a run of going to see a number Broadway productions. This came about during a visit to New York that February, where we both had our first, second, and third Broadway experiences in the span of a week. It didn't end there, however, as we continued to see travelling shows a much closer to home.

If you were to ask me ten years ago if I'd ever go to a musical production, I'd probably give a shitty remark that would've been offensive to someone instead of a simple "no". But, I'd since gone to and enjoyed a few shows in SF with friends, and then this string with Kayla over the last year. There's definitely something about watching a group of people pull off a real-time professional production that's got a particular feel to it. Appreciation for the craft, perhaps.

But, anyways. The thrust of today's venture will be in writing tiny reviews of the shows that Kayla and I saw together.

Aladdin (10/10) - I think this is the first musical I saw a few years back in SF, and this is the musical that kicked off our run on Broadway. The show hits a lot of the beats of the 1992 movie, but changes things up to really be its own thing (something live action Disney remakes would be good to take note of). "Friend Like Me" is far and away the standout number, and is both a visual and auditory spectacle.

Hamilton (8/10)* - I want to say Hamilton is the thing that got Kayla into the Broadway mood originally. We'd watched the Disney+ version when it came out and were completely confused; so much fast talking. However, she started listening to the recorded version and it began to make sense. The show itself is actually pretty great and most of the songs are bops, and they manage to do a lot with one set and a rotating center stage. We also got a Weird Al polka out of it. That it turns out the real Hamilton was actually the antithesis to how he was portrayed here does kind of taint the experience a bit...

Wicked (6/10) - The final show we saw actually on Broadway, Wicked is a reconfigured telling of the Wizard of Oz taken from the angle "what if the wicked witch wasn't actually the bad guy?". It was... fine? Of all the shows we saw, this one felt like the most classical stage production. None of the songs grabbed me and the story and sets were fine. It was fine.

Dear Evan Hansen (5/10) - Dear Evan Hansen was our first show seen in San Jose and follows the exploits of one Evan Hansen as he gets caught up in an perpetuates a lie about how he was best friends with a rando classmate who offs themselves. We'd actually watched the movie version of this first and came away with a less than stellar impression. The handling of the core conceit was... offputting? I dunno. The stage version fared a little better, but an overall lack of bops and spectacle just made it meh.

Come From Away (9/10) - Come From Away is based off the true story of a small town in Newfoundland who saw an influx of "refugees" after the grounding of aircraft immediately following the 9/11 attacks. A cast of about a dozen people perform the roles of two or three times as many characters, all without costume or set changes, and filled with a delightful array of Irish folksy songs (apparently, Newfoundland had a lot of Irish immigrants). I didn't know what to expect going in, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Lion King (?/10) - We had tickets to see this, but then I got COVID and we had to cancel last minute. Whoops.

Cats (8/10) - Cats and I have a bit of history. I first became aware of it forever ago when it breezed through Tulsa and was being advertised on local TV. I thought it was the dumbest looking shit I'd ever seen. Then (and more specific to me) they released it as a CGI monstrosity of a movie that struck all the right chords for "so bad it breaks my brain" levels of enjoyable entertainment. I made one of my best friends watch it on a visit and it broke his brain so much, that became a cornerstone of his best man speech. With that setup, I had to see the play when it blew through San Jose. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was a shockingly enjoyable experience. The plot is nonsensicle and only exists to provide a framework for the musical numbers, but (most of) the musical numbers had their own unique charm in a way that I think only works as a live performance. Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat and his light up, color changing vest was something to behold. I think I'd actually watch Cats again.

Moulin Rouge (6/10) - Kayla had been rotating Moulin Rouge songs through her Broadway playlist and it left me mildly confused and a little curious. The soundtrack consisted of mostly (if not all) medleys of pop songs, hence my intrigue. In the end, that's about all it had going for it. The story was generic and outside of a couple of numbers, I don't remember many of the songs being that spectacular. This was the first show we saw in the city (SF, for outsiders) and it's worth noting that every other show we saw in that theater still had confetti from Moulin Rouge hanging around. Oh, and don't watch the movie version unless you're a really big fan of Dutch angles and fake slow motion...

Book of Mormon (10/10) - It's a musical about Mormons made by the creators of South Park and half of the musical team from Frozen. You're gonna have a great time. The spectacle is there, the hilarity is there, the story is delightfully satiricle. Honestly, to that last point, it draws a lot of parallels to Monty Python's Life of Brian, which is a delightfully satirical look at religion as a whole. This was my second time seeing the show, and it may have delivered even better than the first.

Frozen (7/10) - It's interesting seeing a Broadway show of a movie that stars Broadway singers, namely Idina Menzel (the voice of Elsa, who starred in Wicked) and Jonathan Groff (Kristoff in Frozen, King George in Hamilton)... and the actors portraying those characters not quite nailing it as well. Honestly, it's Frozon; you know more or less what you're getting into. I enjoy the movie well enough, but I don't think this production really brought anything new to the table. Honestly, I think the version that they used to put on multiple times every day at Califirnia Adventure for the price of park admission was a more enjoyable experience. The kid who played young Anna in the Broadway version was fun, though. She was clearly having the time of her life.

Six (6/10) - Rounding everything out is Six, a pop musical about the six wives of King Henry VIII. This was another soundtrack that Kayla had incorporated into regular rotation prior to seeing and... kind of the same issue with Moulin Rouge: seeing it acted out didn't really add a whole lot more. I'm only partial to one or two of the songs, so that didn't really leave a lot left. Also, it just had me remembering all that time spent on European history that I didn't care about :|.

That concludes all the Broadway shows we saw since that journey to New York. A real zero to sixty in a hurry situation, but I'm not against going to more shows. Or the symphony, that's always fun.

With a baby, though, who knows when that'll be.