Latest photo of Emmet - and its a winner!

Click on this to see a larger image.

Emmet's 1/2 bday

Emmet is 6 months old today! Wow, I can't beleive that at this time 6 momths ago I was hanging out in a delivery room anxiously awaiting his arrival. Heis such a wonderful addition to the family, I can't imagine life without him,. And Micah is turning out to be a fabulous big brother. I promise to get more pictures posted soon and link'em to the blog.

Last night we went with Rafa, Alex, and Amina to the Wyman Park big band concert. Micah was mesmerized by the "boy playing the saxophone", and Micah and Amina had loads of fun chasing each other around in circles. Amina came over aftewards and ate a snake with Micah, and cooled off in out ACed living room. Micah can't stop talking about Amina, we have to have her back soon!

Here I am...

to blog you like a hurricane...
My apologies to the Scorpions for hijacking one of their most famous song titles, but it won't be the last time..although I promise never to mention the Winds of Change..
speaking of the Scorps, how they never got nominated for worst album cover for this gem is beyond me, let alone how that ever got the OK from a major record label in the early '80s!

Anyhow, its been a week since I talked to you loyal bloggers..I want to kick a shout out to Wes for commenting on my last entry - comments are welcome and encouraged!
The past week was busy - I'm trying to attend to things I've ignored while I was teaching full time for three weeks in the school's summer institute. And re-entry is hard, I tell you. One of the things I have to get done in the near future is a 15 page paper for a class I took in the beginning of the summer - getting me one step closer to knocking out my distribution credits for my slow moving PhD in biostats. The topic is along the lines of "should the US have universal healthcare and why.." Of course the whole class was pretty much advocating for universal health coverage so its pretty clear what they expect from the paper. I think universal healthcare is a great idea, for sure - not neccessarily easy to do, but a great idea- but part of me feels like being contrarian just because its clear how strongly the instructors feel about it. I'm pretty tired of being a grad student, its a grind. Especially because I primarily want to the degree so that I can teach "anywhere", and a small, but outspoken minority in my department (certainly not most though) seem to think this is the least noble goal of all.
Anyhow, sorry for the rant , I'm just in a lull period with schoolin'..

So my inlaws are here this weekend - they rolled in Friday night and are here through today (Sunday). Micah and Emmet are thrilled to have their Bubby and Pop in the house, as are Roni and I. My father in law is allergic to cats, and we have 2, so they always stay at a hotel. This time around they stayed at the Marriot Inner Harbor, on the 27th view, affording them a kick ass view! Better yet, the hotel has a pool - so all of us went their yesterday and got our swim on. Emmet was really cure as he tooled around in a float, and kicked up a storm. Micah was reluctant to get in the water at first, but after some serious coaxing he got into his float (he calls it his orange boat) and had a great time. It wa my first time in a pool in a year and it was awesome - however it was so chlorinated, I'm still recovering - I'm already white as a ghost, and now any evidence of a tan has been bleached off..

Roni and I were able to got out Saturday night becasue the inlaws were kind enough to babysit. In a typical fashion, though, we didn't get out the door until about 8:15 - we hurried down to Mount Vernon to catch some of Artscape. We got there and it was in full effect - we saw some cool arts and crafts for sale, some not so cool art, and hear Qtip from afar as he was headlining the main stage. A lot of "throw your hands in the air and wave'em like you don;t care" stuff coming stage.. but I can't just raise the roof without thinking about it, so I didn't participate..

It was getting on to about 9:30 and we were hungry - so we rolled back to the Accord and headed back to Hampden to go to the Golden West Cafe and get our grub on. It was really nice to go out on a date together - note to self, get babysittin' more often. We love weekends and hanging out full time with the boys, but after they go to bed its nice to get out of the house and spend time alone together...

Anyway, it's Sunday morning, and I'm out for now - more bloggin' to come soon.

Back in blog

So, let's just get the record straight - it is hotter than hell in Bmore these days. Humidity above 90%. temps above 90 - reminds me of those old skool Scooby Doo Cartoons where Scoob would cut a piece out of the fog and grub down on it - the things one will eat when high - anyhow its like that with haze in these parts.
So with two kids and a massive tuition bill (I had to pay about 3K for a summer class), I'm a bit cash poor these days - luckily this was a get something for nothing weeekend! First, Roni participated in a pregnancy outcomes study and got about 75$ in gift certificates from Walmart - a corporate monster if there ever was one - we boycott them on principle, but of course our principles are not strong enough to give up 75$ in gift certificates. So we rolled out to the Towson Walmart - and got a lot of things for 75$..as much as I hate the store on principal, goddamn their prices are right as rain..

Speaking of rain we've gotten a lot this weekend - Saturday night Beech Avenue looked like the Mississippi river..but the rain sure is bullshitting when it comes to wiping out humidity.

On the freebee tip, I traded in a bunch of CDs for store credit at Record and Tape Traders yesterday - you know how that goes- they take about 20 of your CDs and give you credit for 3-4 new ones in return. I picked up the latest from Oneida, Sleater-Kinney, Darkest Hour (death metalers from DC no less), and Lungfish. I'll come back at you with reviews once I've absorbed them. Of course I took about 40 CDs to sell - about half were rejected. Their loss - I can now rock Devastatin' Dave the Turntable Slave's Zip Zap Rap for a few more years.

On Sunday we finally got out of the house and rolled to the Maryland Science Center to partake in Bubblemania! Actually, this is not where we set out to go, but Micah was quite convincing after we got in the car. The membership we purchases has served us quite well. By coincidence, I was wearing my Mr. Bubble shirt - so hundreds of peole made the ame joke in about 1 hour - did you wear that especially for Bubbble Mania?

Anyhoo, I'll be back with more blogging' soon, and this time I mean it!

sorry for lolly-blogging

look in the next couple of days for a masssive update in the blog - sorry for delays, loyal readers, I've been sittin' around waiting for something blogworthy to happen -
but most of my everyday life is blogworthy, wouldn't you say? So I'll get on it like a hornet.