I Haven't Had A Good Night's Sleep in 16 Hours
One of the long spewed montras of the two new-to-fathering fathers here has been "Oh, you better get as much sleep as you can, because you'll not get a good nights's sleep the first couple of years." T-boss even went so far as to say that since his 2-year old daughter has been born, he has not had a good night's sleep.

I commented to Labman and TC, both childless, that even if my house had mortars going off outside 24/7, in two years, I'd manage to get at least one good night of sleep.

Well, guessy what? I think in the past month, and it has been a month and two days, since we've had Nina, I think there were only three nights where I didn't sleep well. Of course, the first few, where she had to deal with being separated from her foster mother (her family, to her) are understandable. And when I stay up to 11pm playing video games when my daughter is sick and I pretty much know she'll wake up around 2am since she went to sleep so early, well, those are my fault.

Last night wasn't a bad night, but she sure was rattling those stupid toy keys she has around. After my alarm went off at 5:30 and I got up and took a shower, I went over to the bassinet that she's sleeping in (in our bedroom, so much slack must be cut toward the kid for any waking of us she does do, which really doesn't happen) and the ring part of the key ring was on her leg, above the knee, and she's totally asleep but when she moves, sure, it makes noise.

So, I woke her up by taking it off. Oops.

And another thing, when I would jokingly say, "Oh, my kid will be different" when people told me about the *horrors of parenting and they said, "Just you wait." Well, so far, my kid has been a lot better than your average rug rat. She uses the toilet for her poo. She doesn't cry unless the situation really warrants it, and usually, just fussing and whining covers most situations in her daily life. And she falls asleep at the drop of a hat. Yeah, life is rough.

Sonic Mine? Photon Torpedo?
The other day while driving my crappy work van from one place to another, suddenly one of the deepest, loudest, but with a quick attack and decay, if you know what I mean, sounded. It wasn't a "boom", it was more a "dun." Me and the other drivers on the Parkway looked around but didn't see anything. I'm sure that everyone in a house near us looked around too. But people quickly lost interest, as did I. In fact, by the time I cleared the bank parking lot and was looking at the people at the tire place, they had all turned back around to do whatever they were doing before.

We know what it was. It was the Arsenal testing something. If you don't know who Werner Von Braun is, he is some former-nazi rocket dude that lived here and pretty much got us into space. That's why all the schools here are named after dead astronauts. Though it must be noted that the older astronauts, Grissom, Chaffee, Stone, etc, they got schools named after them, but newer astronauts only got schools named after the ship they died in; Challenger and Columbia.

But, whatever it was that the arsenal boomed at us (or dunned), it was very impressive and sci-fi in my opinion. Just thinking about how tight that thud sound traveled, since it was on then off quickly, it was like one of those 2-D explosions they have on Star Trek where the only explody part is like this blue ring of fire that's rapidly expanding. It reminds me of a scene in Futurama where Bender and Fry are playing with a flashlight that sees though things:

Bender: "What should we point it at first?"
Fry: "I dunno. Try it on me!"
*ZAP*
Fry: "Ow! My sperm!"
Bender: "Wow! Neat! Mind if I try that again?" *zap*
Fry: "Huh, didn't hurt that time."

Come in, Come in, You're Breaking Up!
I think Alison's most anecdotal moment on Wednesday was when she was going down the road and had a cardboard box fly across several lanes of traffic (according to her) and hit her mom's car. It didn't leave noticeable scratches in the paint, but it did try to rip the power antenna off. Alison lamented driving an obviously damaged 10 year old car (I was driving her car, and we just hadn't returned the Camry at that point). Well, it went into the body shop yesterday at 3:40ish and we had a call that it was ready by 4:11. We went back and just scooted it from the body shop to the service department, as it needs some random crap. $500 worth of random crap. One of those hundred is to replace a light bulb inside the dash. You'd think that they'd make them easier to get to (or maybe not so they can make more money). It's the one that lets her know what gear she is in and, I think, the fuel gauge.

And today is Friday, no real plans today. But tomorrow Tom et al will babysit so Alison and I can go see a movie. Tom hasn't seen Nina much, so he called and volunteered. I guess we'll try to see Spiderman 2 again.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 6:54 AM