Magda and I had our last doc appt this afternoon. Fairly routine given we are just a couple of days now from the big event. There is no movement on the baby’s part to try and make with a fanciful escape (which is good) so we’ll hopefully be on schedule for Friday morning. I plan to be twittering through the whole thing and uploading pics to flickr as I can. We are in the same hospital again (Seton Central) and there’s no wifi to speak of so I’ll see if I can tether my phone to get some connectivity - given that the speeds are awful slow and present-day digicams produce rather large files I can make no promises. Additionally, I seem to have forgotten that we’ll be in the hospital for a few days (oh yeah, that!) so we will likely not return home until on Monday some time. All sets of parents, save Magda’s, are out of state until after the birth (wild set of coincidences and ironies there since they are *never* out of state) but hopefully they’ll join us over the weekend. We are still working on a name but my hope is that he’ll help us out when he makes with the arriving.

And because I’m such a geek I continue to work on the new blog theme which continues to get closer. I think I’ve got my tweets in the sidebar styled like I want them (I just need to add curves to non-gecko browsers (yes, it’s somewhat of a nod to twitterific). I also added styling to the search form so that it resembles the apple search input (thanks to brandspankingnew for the inspiration). There are really so many facets to consider and given that I don’t often get more than a half-hour/hour to work on it that makes it all the more difficult (context switching sucks). I still haven’t tested in any IEs but I don’t really care at the moment as it renders great in firefox and safari. I may just push what I have in the next few days and leave the rest to a more iterative approach since at least most of the plumbing is in better shape with this thing. Anyhow, it’s getting closer.

Found via Eric Meyer. An interesting set of questions - i’ll be curious to see the results. Oh, and if you leave your name and email there are prizes to be had!

This action will start the evening before, with flyering all over town. Then on April 28 there will be a picnic from 12:00pm–2:00pm in Zilker Park where we will wear our favorite anti-war/anti-Bush t-shirts, make protest signs and meet plenty of like minded Austin families!! We will spell out the word IMPEACH with our bodies. Click here for more info and to help out.

Via VolunteerForchange

To find a rally near you, check out this CommunityWalk Page. With the new little one arriving we obviously won’t be able to make this one

Somehow I ended up in a discussion today with a friend over the War in Iraq and I found myself trying to up-end the multitude of lies thrust into his brain by the Drudge Report

Now mind you, this friend is well read and intelligent so in moving the debate forward there was always the “prove it” or “link me” factor to any of the arguments I was providing. Among the things that he found shocking was that Bush/Cheney themselves had admitted that 1) the pre-war intelligence on WMD was wrong and they “misspoke” and 2) there was no operational relationship (or relationship whatsoever) between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Those two ideas set the stage for the war so if you break these down then you break the basis for the war down, essentially. Doing a brief search tonight I, thankfully, ran again across Mother Jones’ excellent Lie by Lie: The Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline - which has got to be essential reading for those of you just joining the anti-war party we’re having (better late than never).

Many Iraqis can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them. If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you. As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free. In a free Iraq, there will be no more wars of aggression against your neighbors, no more poison factories, no more executions of dissidents, no more torture chambers and rape rooms. The tyrant will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.

Via Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation The Cross Hall - March 17, 2003

What a difference four years can make…

It seems that people who deliberately deconstruct religion, then exorcise it from their lives, eventually realize that maybe they’re not so much smarter than everyone who’s ever lived after all. When they inevitably discover that faith has a purely utilitarian value as a way of mitigating the mounting existential dread that arises from simply being alive, they generally resort to creating some kind of half-assed religion substitute. This leads to spiritual philosophies that embarrass everybody, like aromatherapy and everything Jewel believes.

Via misnomer

Weekends seem to be getting shorter for some reason. Half the weekend is already gone and I have a ton of stuff to try and get done before the work week starts yet again. My poor baby boy has been sick again. He’s vomitted, seemingly randomly, twice now in as many days. (You’ve never lived until your child vomits all over himself and the carseat.) I know he hates it. There’s a specific cry that he makes before the heave-ho comes and I know that cry very well now. I pick him up to soothe him and within the next few seconds usually find myself drenched. I don’t mind it though and only wish I could do more to keep him calm. Still, he’s also had a low grade fever these past two days. Tylenol seems to keep it at bay but if it continues tomorrow we’ll probably head to the pediatrician. Given that he’s in daycare again (and started only recently) I assumed we’d have a bout of frequent illnesses to contend with as his immune system got used to having friends again. Better now than when the baby comes and I’m curious as to if there’ll be any transferrance though (obviously I hope it’ll be very little).

Work on the new blog theme is going well and I hope to have the new site in place by SXSWi. My launch party will be buying a round of beers for my friends at some point during the conference (as that the proper term for it?). Of course, this will notify all 2 of the readers who even read this thing. It’s funny, I bookmarked it for Magda and she still hasn’t read my latest entries (if she’s reading this finally, she’s definitely laughing now). I’ve actually been trying to get her to co-blog with me. I’d be curious to see how that kind of experiment would work out. Or maybe I’ll just get her own blog set up at some point here.

I’m still twittering. I really love micro-blogging and I think there’s a lot of room for some cool stuff to happen in this space. I was thinking about a twitter type way to keep track of stuff at work. Instead of dealing with timesheets or index cards (which I love but can be a hassle on the days where I end up context switching a lot) you could have a twitter-like widget that posts your context switches. You could capture all the information you need in a few short words (hell, just act like your tagging) and you’d have the time recorded. It’s not fancy or even novel but I have a feeling something like that would work. Is there anything out there that does this now?

My fucking garbage disposal is on the fritz again and this time the reset button didn’t fix it. MF.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, House Democratic Caucus chairman, had written Gonzales two letters suggesting that he name Carol Lam, fired as U.S. attorney in San Diego, as an outside counsel to continue her pursuit of the Duke Cunningham case. Asked by Melissa Charbonneau of the Christian Broadcasting Network about this column’s report that Gonzales did not respond, Gonzales said: “I think that the American people lose if I spend all my time worrying about congressional requests for information, if I spend all my time responding to subpoenas.”

TPMMuckraker on a new Bob Novak column citing the above.

My first reaction to this was in the ‘WTF?!?!?’ category but that just doesn’t do any of this justice (ahem). Here’s the problem that Mr. Gonzales has. He is not above the law and he is certainly not above a subpoena from the United States Congress. Even on this account his boss could not save his ass. My guess is that if Gonzales continues to head in this direction that we are going to see an interesting confrontation (that may or may not take place regardless of this particular snub) and possibly that constitutional crises (that we are already in but people think is still coming) will reach critical mass. The bottom line is that the justice department has some serious problems. We know all too well that given Gonzales’ previous testimony that he is simply…not suited? ill-equipped? No, he’s a smart guy I think but there’s something about the willingness to use his interpretation of things to destroy our freedoms and liberties (and with such ease) that makes me nervous about our ability to right the ship once he’s gone.

I hope after this our congressional leaders will pin his ass to a chair in front of a committee, make him raise his right hand and explain why he thinks he doesn’t need to respond to them…

IT IS TIME FOR CONGRESS TO ACT!
With support from True Majority, Working Assets, the RainbowPUSH Coalition, the National Organization for Women and hundreds of other national and local groups, word about the Jan. 27th antiwar mobilization is reaching far and wide. Momentum is building and people from all walks of life and every corner of the country will be marching on Washington, DC, on Saturday, Jan. 27th.

Our message will be clear, our voice will be strong: End the war in Iraq, Bring all the troops home now! We urge you to join us!

Austin is getting in on the action. I’d like to try and make it. I would hope that the UPJ folks might bring a little bit different sauce to the table - the last march put on by worldcantwait had a little too much flower power (and not in a good way…really). Either way, it’s an important thing to do - and although we can’t change “the decider’s” decision we can certainly lean on congress to really, seriously do something about this.

I slid off of the detox today. Last night was awful. Sebastian is teething again - getting back molars so I was up a pretty good bit last night. The one thing about the detox is that you need plenty of rest and limited stress - between that and a fire at work today I went off the deep end. OJ most of the day, organic vegetable soup tonight - and hopefully I can maintain a reasonable dieting strategy (whatever that is) moving forward.

Lessons Learned:

• Make sure you drink as much “tea” as you can force down during the detox. This is something that I wasn’t aggressive with this time.
• Know that you are going to have time that is relatively stress free in which you can relax.
• Have OJ in the house in case you decide to come off the detox suddenly. You don’t want to just eat because you can put your stomach in a twist. Since I was in the middle of something the better part of the day I couldn’t get to any OJ and my body was feeling it. Once I did get it, it was some time before I felt stable again.
• Amy’s Vegetable Soup is really, really good (and really, really expensive).

Best laid plans of mice and men often go awry…