So, other than my daughter, what else do I find awesome these days? Hmmm.

I'm digging this huge freshwater stingray. The headline link on the NG main page is "World's Biggest Freshwater Stingray Found?" and then you see that photo when you click on it. So you can't help but think that they found it in that kiddie pool.
Nautiloids (nautili? nautiluses?) are pretty cool too.

This is why we all need to go back to cassette tapes right now! Though I would be happy to stick with my iPod Touch if someone would write an app that turned it into a lightsaber.
Remember that episode of the Tartakovsky Clone Wars cartoon that had Padme and Yoda (and C3PO and R2-D2) on a snowy planet and they were attacked by droids? So do these artists:
Katie Cook

Adam Hughes
'
Grant Gould

Cuz rly u need to have a bath sometimes.

Thinking about the eye thing- in the comments a few posts back we were discussing whether the human eye ever grows. "They" say it doesn't, but looking at a baby's eyes it's hard to believe. And it doesn't make sense because the eye develops in utero right? It must grow at some point in there so why not ex utero? Must be a myth. A giant squid has the biggest eye ever but a baby giant squid is about the size of a jellybean.

Anyways. I like to play this game when I read the newspaper- whenever I see a crazy headline I always add "due to the bad economy" and then read the article. Today it was "Shark Attacks Down in 2008". Sure enough, this was blamed on the economy. I guess blamed would be the wrong word, but you knowutimean. Apparently, the recession means less tourism which means fewer tourists in the oceans for sharks to bite.

Anytime you spend more than three weeks away from a coal mine you pretty much need a tour to get oriented again. Geologic changes that would ordinarily take millions of years and an asteroid impact or two we accomplish in a month. None of the shovels are where you left them. One of our main roads that we've been using for four years is all dug out. Now we have to use alternate routes. Which means that my old hiding places are no good anymore!
Our cable reeler is broke down. Which sucks. Means all the endless cable work we always do now has to be done by hand, and with pickup trucks. The cable reeler is an old- like, 25 years or so- Cat loader with a reeling attachment instead of a bucket. As cantankerous and bitchy as it is, it is one of the most valuable pieces of equipment out there. Without it, moving shovels and drills becomes extremely difficult. Can't move your shovels and drills? Can't mine. Yet we find a way. And the big bosses see we can make do without so they don't sweat about the reeler so much. See how it's a vicious cycle?
I missed a minor bit of excitement when a baggie of dope was found on one of the haultrucks. Charlie was joking that he should go claim it, since just last month he had to get his PSP back from the big boss. Then I said he could just say it was medicinal marijuana that he'd bought with his health and wellness account. But the funniest was on facebook where one of my friends was sending birthday greetings to another guy: Happy birthday man! Did you find that bag of weed I left you?

This is the only photo of the cable reeler I have! The machine with its back to the camera. I guess even I take it for granted. Well, if you care, my friend Craig posted a pic on Facebook but I dunno if you can see it or not. It's kind of hidden behind the haultrucks.

Happy Family Day! I am going to celebrate by leaving my family behind to go off to work for a couple of days. Only two, just baby steps here. But after that it is back to the 4 on 4 off rotation. Ergh! Okay, me go spend time with my family now.

I love this sequence of photos:

Yogic Flyers

have you heard of the yogic flyers?

their flyer caught my eye

the one on the bulletin board I mean

and I couldn't get them out of my mind

I always wanted to fly

though I was never much for yoga

but I went to their meeting

spent three hours 

bouncing on my bum

my friends laughed when I told them

and they howled when I showed them

but I'm just at stage 1

next week I'll learn stage 2

and after that

well

I'll wave to you from the clouds

Okay I don't really know where that came from, I just wanted to write a quick fun poem to prove I still can even with a baby in the house (helps that Grandma is here for a few days to help out). Check out this video for more on yogic flying. I think I saw Aang!

Life is still pretty crazy but there is time to read a book of poetry (really excellent stuff, Harvey, for real!) and watch a season of Lost. There just isn't that much time to discuss such things in depth.

But, time for a  favorite passage from Moonshot, from Tusalava:

a

porous world

within skin

where silly bacilli wobble

a jelly ballet

on invisible wires

I think tomorrow we will try our first outing as a family. In the last week I have left the house twice to go to the store. Michelle hasn't left at all as she recovers. And Pallas has only been outside once in her entire life!  To come home from the hospital. So our big adventure tomorrow will be modest- a trip to the local SCup I think. Time to get my child her first espresso. 

Anyways, while People Magazine hasn't called to offer us a million dollars to publish photos of  Miss Athena, the internets is still lighting up with photos of her here and there.

I gave Michelle The Tales of Beedle the Bard as a stocking stuffer, and I just read it the other day. Fun book, pretty much perfectly suited for stuffing a stocking. I think my favorite tale was Babbity Rabbity and Her Cackling Stump. Which sounds like it might be a cutesy Beatrix Potter-like confection, but none of the tales really are, and I think Rowling even casts some thinly veiled scorn hexes at Potter. Uh, Beatrix, not Harry.

Anyways, a good excuse to bring the Quidditch Bear back for a few days!  When is the new Harry Potter coming out, anyways?

Neil Gaiman was on Q this morning. The Coraline movie comes out tomorrow. Which means Michelle and I should be able to see it in a year or so. Oh well. Coraline was the first book I read to Michelle when we started dating. I remember going to Hawrelak Park and laying in the sun, reading about this brave little girl and her Other Mother.

Anyways, now that Michelle has to spend quite a chunk of time feeding Pallas, I started reading to her again. This time it's The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews. Good book, funny. Partly depressing too but I am sure Pallas won't pick up on that. When she gets a bit older I will start reading to her for sure. Good books with just the right amount of subversiveness, like Coraline and anything by Roald Dahl.

Baby's sleeping, wife's resting. I have a few minutes.
That turned out to be a lie but now wife is feeding baby and I have a few minutes. So. The ordeal.
Tuesday morning we woke up at 6:30 or so and Michelle calmly informed me she was feeling contractions. Not crazy ones but definitely contractions. Breakfast was normal, I even timed my farts to join in the fun. Turns out there is no pattern to those. We did our normal routine, went shopping, went for lunch, all the while contractions, regular and manageable. We even watched Hellboy II which I really enjoyed. Cool villain. But by the afternoon we decided to call in our doola. Dula? Doula? However you spell it it means someone who helps and advises us in the childbirth process. In this case my aunt. She sat with us for a while and said that when the contractions got to the point where they lasted 30 seconds and were coming every four minutes or so we should head to the hospital. So we did.
They sent us home, since there was hardly any dilation.
A few hours later it was even worse so we went back.
They sent us home.
The next day.

And it just kept getting worse for Michelle. I got five hours of sleep but she didn't. Her birthday and she was in hard labour the whole time. I don't even remember when we went to the hospital for the third time. Sometime in the afternoon. Even then they couldn't do much as she just wasn't dilated enough. But the sympathetic nurse let us walk around for an hour and then she would re-examine her. So we did, and Michelle threw up from the pain. Finally the nurse declared she was 4 cms which might have been a fudge but whatever. We were in. Right away she got set up with an epidural and that made a huge difference for her pain. But even with oxytocin there was not much progress and another 12 hours or something went by. Finally her ob-gyn came and said it was time to do a c-section- baby was facing the wrong way and was stuck. Michelle welcomed it but it turned me into a mess. They're gonna cut my wife open! My baby is stuck in there and not coming out any other way. Not much sucks worse in the world that I've ever known than that.
But you know what? Less than an hour later Pallas was born and Michelle was fine.
Pallas was more or less healthy but swallowed some maconium or myrconium or whatever you call it so they whisked her away to the brand new neonatal intensive care unit where she had to spend her first 24 hours in a cool Viper-like canopy.

There she got fitted with some wires and leads and sensors and even a cylon toe! But she is not a cylon. She looked a little like a mountain gorilla when she was first born because her head was all coned up from getting stuck but that went away. And her little rancor arms too!
Anyways, so we spent something like 5 days in the hopital. Mom had wires and Pallas had wires and it was sorta scary, but it was nice to have so many amazing nurses looking after everyone. Even the first poo meltdown was rescued by a nurse while Michelle and I watched slack-jawed in shock and awe.
We're home now and thanks for all your support!

She's here! She's home!



Her name is Pallas and she's perfect!