Garth!

To paraphrase the late Chris Farley . . . That was AWESOME! We went to a Garth Brooks concert at Staples Center this afternoon. My parents got me tickets for my birthday. Don't worry, my b-day isn't actually until Feb. 20, so you have plenty of time to get me something. I'll post my wish list later.
Anyway, Garth did 5 shows here in L.A. to benefit firefighters, and they were all sold out. We got our tickets through Stub Hub and they were really good seats. We were in the first section on the right side of the stage (if you're looking at it), which meant we were only 50 feet or so away. Again, it was AWESOME! As you can see, I'm still pumped and the concert ended 7 hours ago. He generates and uses so much energy during his performances, and he has a really great connection with the audience (see attached video). He goes out of his way to ensure they're being entertained. He even did two encores! Of course, it helps that he has great songs.

The funniest part is that he does the same shtick at all of his shows. He used the same jokes when he played Central Park, yet they weren't stale because it just let you know what song was coming next, which got you excited. For example, when he introduced the rest of the band, and the audience clapped, he made sure to get up and remind the other band members how he was the Top Dog on the stage and how nobody would ever take top billing over him. Of course, that let us all know Trisha was coming out to sing, which she promptly did. The audience went wild, although I was pretty reserved because that relationship still gives me the willies. After she left, he started talking about how the audience didn't like him anymore, but it was okay because he could just go sit in the corner and play his guitar. So, we all knew he was about to play "Friends in Low Places". It was a really fun concert and I'm so glad I got to see him live.

Just to prove I was there.

And that Lorein was there too.

Pictures at last!

We've received many requests for exclusive photos of our newest member, but because we're a family of the people, we've shunned all seekers and just put them up on our blog! Yes, it hurts financially, but it's the least we can do.

As you can see, he or she (Baby) was a strapping/elegant (depending on the sex) 5.86 cm tall a couple of weeks ago. At least that's what I think the dotted line and numbers mean. The only resemblance we can pick out so far is that Baby has Chris' dark eyes. We're also hoping Baby grows out of this weird, alien-like stage.

Now here's a real alien picture for you!

Business of Being Born 2

I should be a national news journalist. "Newsweek" has an article on "The Business of Being Born", but just you all remember who scooped them. I did! Here's the link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/96400.

The Business of Being Born

We just got back from watching a movie full of naked women moaning, including talk show phenom Ricki Lake. Unfortunately, they were all giving birth, so it wasn't as titillating as it sounds. Yes, Lorein dragged me to "The Business of Being Born". It's supposedly been heralded as "The Inconvenient Truth" of the birthing industry, and I'll admit, it was pretty eye-opening (which is saying something since there were a lot of scenes where I wanted to close my eyes). The movie's agenda was to show how the birthing industry has stolen the birth experience from the mother by controlling how the birth occurs. It was unabashedly pro-midwifery (which they pronounced "mid-whiff-ery"), but still recognized the need for specialized birthing procedures and technology. I think the thesis was that the vast majority of births do not require advanced care, which can be dangerous (after all, a Cesarean section is still a major surgery), but that hospitals have made such care part of their routine operating procedures and it takes an informed, assertive woman to overcome those procedures. Here are some of the moments from the movie I felt were most interesting:

• They asked a group of three NYU Ob/Gyn students "How many natural births have you witnessed as part of your schooling?" The students just stared at the camera and then, after a few seconds, smiled sheepishly. Apparently, the soon to be birth doctors had little experience with a non-doctor-driven birth.

• They interviewed a doctor who admitted there is a direct correlation between induced births and C-sections. What happens is the Pitocin greatly increases the pain by strengthening and lengthening contractions, which causes the woman to get an epidural, which slows down the labor, which forces the doctors to administer more Pitocin, which leads to even stronger contractions that cut off the baby's air flow, which makes the doctor fear for the baby, which causes the doctor to perform a C-section.

• Another doctor mentioned a study which showed an uptick in C-sections at 4 pm and 10 pm. In other words, an uptick in C-sections when the doctors realize it's time for them to go home.

• To be fair, many doctors argued the reason for the increase in C-sections is because of litigation. With a C-section, the doctor can say "I did all I could to save the baby". Those dang lawyers.
  

• The U.S. has the highest costs per birth of all industrialized countries, yet has the second highest infant mortality rate among those countries.
  

• In Japan and Europe, midwifes attend over 70% of births. In the U.S., that number is under 8%.
  

One of the pro-midwife people they interviewed summed the movie up: "Giving birth can be an incredible, uplifting, and empowering experience, or it can be a traumatic and scarring experience". Interestingly enough, the film ended with one of the would-be mothers it had been following requiring a C-section because of complications. The ironic twist, though, just seemed to demonstrate the point the movie was trying to make -- it is good we have advanced medical procedures, we just need to make sure we don't go crazy with them.
I don't know how much I believe all of their claims, but they were pretty convincing and the movie was definitely worth seeing. Here's the website: www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com

Now, for those of you who actually read this entire post, you deserve to know that Lorein is three months pregnant.

Visiting Visalia

Saturday morning, we drove up to visit David Martin, attorney at law, his wife, Stephanie Martin, not an attorney at law but a person who still does other things well such as cut hair and tell jokes, and their new baby Matthew, who is an expert pooper and sleeper. (Yes, I am proud of the number of grammatically correct commas I was able to fit into that sentence.) They live in the glorious Central Valley wonderland of Visalia -- or as it is sometimes known -- Eden. It was quite nice to get out of the city and enter a realm of affordable houses and families. I mean, the restaurant we ate at actually had tables that could seat more than four people! Definitely not an L.A. establishment. In addition, when Dave took me golfing on Saturday afternoon, we were able to get right onto the course. It wasn't crowded at all. When we went golfing at Rancho Park here in L.A., it took us four hours just to finish the first nine holes! There, we cruised right along. The only thing that was less than ideal was the smog. I was really surprised as we descended from the mountains and saw a dark layer covering the valley. It was a brisk Saturday morning, and there was smog?! I asked Dave about it and he said the surrounding mountains create an all-encompassing inversion layer. It's especially surprising when you think of all the crops growing there. You'd think the broad swath of farmland and fairly low population number would defeat the smog forces, but if you did think that, you'd be wrong.
It was also fun to see their new baby, Matthew. The best part about him was he had old man hair. There was no hair on the top of his head, but he had a ring of blond hair from his ears around the back of his head. It looked just like the bald guy in the "Guess Who?" game. In fact, he was so cute that even Chris couldn't resist snuggling up and holding him.

Ok, so we still couldn't get him to hold the baby sans car seat, but we'll take what we can get.

I saw Carson Daly!

Sean McKissick and I went to the driving range on Friday. As we walked up to the tees, we noticed a big sign that read "FREE Golf Lessons with a former MTV VJ". (There was also a notice from NBC saying that anybody that walks past that point consents to their image being on tv, but Sean and I agreed that that couldn't be legally binding. I mean, what if you didn't notice the sign? Or what if you couldn't read?) Since the only former vj I know of is Carson Daly, I was hoping it was him. AND IT WAS! It took me a little while to recognize him since he is 10 years older than when I used to watch him on TRL, and he had a hat on. But it was him. I know I should've gotten a picture, but I had an avocado stain on my shirt, so I was too embarrassed to approach him. What if I passed the sign and then got put on national tv with a green splotch on my stomach?! I didn't want to take the risk. It's true, there are a lot of circumstances when it's advantageous to have an avocado stain on your shirt, but meeting Carson Daly at the driving range isn't one of them. Even when Carson came and sat down on the bench right behind me, I just kept hitting balls and tried to avoid eye contact. I mean, he really lost my respect when he dumped Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Sean informed me that Carson has a late, late, late show that airs after Conan, so that's why it was NBC filming. The funniest part about the encounter was that they kept filming even while Carson just sat on the bench. He wasn't even saying anything, just sitting there. That should make for some riveting late, late, late night television. I now finally realize the damage this writers' strike is doing.

For those of you who don't know, here's Carson Daly. He didn't look this good at the driving range.

UCLA Housing update

Everything's fixed! There was a loose wire in the outlet in the extra bedroom that was causing the problem with the hall light. The best part is that it turns out the mysterious first maintenance man really did replace the kitchen light bulb, but he didn't plug it in all the way.

UCLA Housing

For awhile now, our hall light hasn't been working. That's not right -- it works sporadically. One day, you'll walk in the door, flip the switch, and bask in the electric glow. The next day, you'll walk in the door, flip the switch, realize nothing happened, flip the switch again, realize that just stopped the electricity flow, flip the switch again, get mad that there's no light, feel your way around the corner, hit your hip on the kitchen table, and finally stumble to the switch for the kitchen light, turn that on, and go on to whatever it was you were going to do. We were coping with this inconsistent behavior, mainly because we were too lazy to call UCLA Housing Maintenance to come fix it. The impetus for action came last Saturday when our kitchen light also burned out. Since it's one of those long, neon tube lights, we had to call maintenance to replace it. Of course, being a Saturday, we had to wait until Monday to call, leaving us to spend our weekend in the dark, which actually isn't as romantic as you might think. Monday morning, I called maintenance and placed a work order.
Thursday morning I called again because the maintenance man still hadn't come. We spent the other three days not knowing what we were cooking or eating because we couldn't see anything in the kitchen. You should see our dishes. I talked to the lady in the maintenance office, who put me on hold. When she came back, she said the maintenance man was on break, and that he would call her when he was done. Ok. When I got back from school, it was clear the maintenance man had been there. Not because the lights were fixed, but because the lights were dismantled and placed on our floor. There was no maintenance man in sight. I figured he maybe had just gone to lunch or something, so I waited. Two hours later, I called the maintenance office again. After putting me on hold, the lady told me they were still trying to contact the mechanic and they would call me back. A short time later, she did call back. She said the mechanic would be right over, but it would be a different mechanic than the one that was here this morning. In other words, if I hadn't of called, they would never have known that the mechanic took off half way through the job, leaving our light fixtures strewn about the floor.
The new mechanic arrived and was very nice. He asked me what was wrong and I told him. When I showed him the kitchen light he said, "Oh, the other guy told me had already fixed that. I don't have any bulbs with me." So, he went to work on the hall light. He took apart the light switch, looked at the breaker box, and then asked me what time he could come back tomorrow. In other words, we still can't see, but we now have the added obstacle of trying to walk around disorganized light fixtures in the dark.
As a result, Lorein came up with this joke, which I thought was pretty funny.
Q: How many mechanics does it take to change a light bulb?
A: I'll tell you in the morning.
I guess it's not that funny by itself, but it's pretty good when taken in context.

One of our lovely broken light fixtures

Chris doing dishes in our kitchen--do you think they're clean yet?

New Year's in Temecula

We spent New Year's Eve and New Year's Day with my family in Temecula. Since we hadn't exchanged gifts with them over Christmas, we did so then. Lorein came out pretty well. Let's just say it's good to be the first in-law in the family.

And finally, the secret revealed as to how I turned out like I did . . . my family eats from really big cereal bowls.

Christmas vacation in Vegas

We spent most of our Christmas vacation in Las Vegas which turned out to be surprisingly chilly. Nothing like, say, Ottawa, but cold for us nonetheless. I didn't get to wear shorts a single time! On the one hand, it was nice to have cold weather help us feel like it was really Christmas, but on the other hand, we were in Las Vegas dang it! It should be warm! Anyway, I enjoyed watching the little tykes open their presents, even though it only served to make me jealous. Ah, the good old days when a remote control car could keep me busy for hours even when it didn't have batteries.

Here's Bridget, Calvin, and Logan, in that order. Bridget got a new dress, Calvin a R/C car, and Logan that fabulous red hooded sweatshirt (launch into Adam Sandler song now).

I was told to get a picture of Bridget's new dress or else, so here it is. I also have one of her enthusiastically pulling off all her clothes in order to put on the new dress, but I didn't feel it was appropriate to place on the internet. I didn't want to ruin her chances for future political office, or even for a beauty pageant crown. Plus, Phyllis had curlers in her hair and I didn't know how she would feel about such a picture. In other words, I have racier photos, but if you would like to see them, you need to convince both Bridget and Phyllis to put their consent to the photos' release in writing.

The best part of the vacation was the romantic European getaway Lorein and I were able to take. We saw Paris and got our picture in front of the Eiffel tower; we toured Bellagio and watched the gondolas in Venice; we even made a stop in New York (which isn't in Europe but was the site of our first date) -- all without leaving the Las Vegas strip. Lorein has always said she wanted to go to Italy, so I was able to fulfill that dream AND save a lot of money.