Tonight we were treated to a visit from the one, the only Dave Vernon.  He was out here on business and informed me beforehand that he wanted to arrange a “few hours where he could kidnap Eve and take her picture.”  This involved him coming to the house and treating Eve to a baby paparazzi experience, complete with wardrobe changes, lighting, and all sorts of fun ideas.

It was really good to get to catch up with Dave, we took him to Black & Read and then to dinner at Rock Bottom.  Eve was attracting a small crowd at Rock Bottom, several people in there also had small kids and stopped by to see her and ask how old she was.  It’s weird to have random folks come up and compliment your baby, but we’ll take it.

It felt like Friday all day today, unfortunately there’s one more day of work before the long weekend. *sigh*

After a long and stressful day at work, I am going to curl up in bed.  That is all.

Today I started the complicated work on my Dad’s ukulele.  He wanted me to install cocobolo bindings, something I have never done before.  I followed the instructions as best as I could, taking special care to measure things carefully and test out my cuts on a piece of scrap.  The StewMac binding router bits worked like a charm, and after a little practice I was ready to make my first cut on the ukulele itself.  There was no going back now!

The first cut that I had to make was for the purfling strip, which needed to be as wide as both the binding and the purfling together.  This was a wider cut, which ran the most risk of ripping the top right off the ukulele.  I was really pleased to make both of those cuts on the front and the back of the ukulele without incident.

The second cut is the ledge for the binding, which is a narrower cut but deeper down the side.  When I clamped the ukulele down I heard some cracking, and on closer examination the kerfing strips that brace the inside of the ukuele were very poorly glued.  I told myself that I needed to be careful, so I took my time when doing my test cut for the binding.  Everything seemed fine, so I carried on across the back.

As you can see, this cut seemed just fine.  Gaining confidence, I started in on the top.  I couldn’t tell the extent of the crappy glue-job until I noticed that the top of the ukulele was sagging because the entire bottom edge of the kerfing wasn’t glued AT ALL.  This caused the router to sink lower and cut deeply into the side of the ukulele.  Damn.

I tried for the rest of the afternoon to even the sides down to a consistent measurement so I could re-glue the top on, but on second thought this might dramatically affect the sound of the ukulele and I’d rather not waste the binding material and risk messing up the tuners on an experiment, so I am going to order an additional kit.  I tried cutting the binding slot using a shallower bearing on the back and it seems that this going to be the trick.  You can see the damage to the left.

At least it was a learning experience!

Today we had the distinct pleasure of meeting Paul and Kara’s new baby, Zoe Abigael.  She was born this morning at 2:41 am by c-section, and the entire family is doing just great.  We got the call that they were ready for visitors this afternoon, so we headed over to the hospital to meet the new addition to their family.  It’s easy to see her parents’ features when you hold her up close… the most arresting feature is her full head of hair!  That baby is going to need a haircut at two weeks old.  So adorable!

Getting to hold Zoe took me right back to two months ago getting to hold Eve for the first time.  It was really fun to see Paul and Kara experiencing the same overwhelming joy that we recently got to experience, and knowing that their new baby was very likely to grow up with our baby was a pretty fun thing.  They’ve got some photos up on Paul’s Facebook page, so check them out if you haven’t yet!

Congratulations to the Waltons on their new family, we can’t wait until you’re home and we can come see her again!

Our good friends Paul and Kara Walton are in the process of having their first baby. They are considering a c-section due to lack of progress past 5 cm, so prayers and positive thoughts are encouraged.

It has been a long day for them, so here’s hoping their bundle of joy will arrive soon!

With the recent advent of Hulu Plus on the Xbox 360, I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to augment our Netflix account with Hulu as well.  This would give us the ability to watch current TV shows on our own schedule, and we have been enjoying our Netflix heavily lately.  I suspect this would be one further nail in the coffin for our cable service.  Anyone else out there using Hulu Plus currently that can provide their impressions?

Talk about jumping right into the fray today… I got to the office and we quickly realized that there was a big wrinkle in the code that we were working on, so the rest of the day quickly evaporated into debugging and looking for creative solutions to the problem.  Days like this slip by quickly, mostly due to the amount of concentration required to troubleshoot difficult technical problems.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that they’re often stressful and tiring, so it was quite a relief to get home and find that Eve was being a good girl tonight and let me cuddle with her for awhile without screaming.

We’re now entering the Fussy Hours, she’s been up and down a few times but is now resting quietly on my lap.  Hopefully this trend continues!

Eve’s been smiling off and on for the last few days, but this afternoon we were able to catch it on film.  She’s been acting a little differently the last few days… instead of wanting to be cuddled all the time she’s ok with just sitting propped up on my lap or in her carseat.  She’s been sleeping quite a bit and eating less but in shorter intervals.  Tasha wondered if she was feeling warm this afternoon, but she wasn’t running a fever.  Then she started breaking out with the smiley faces, so it seems she’s doing just fine.

She’s also starting to sleep better at night… we regularly get her to sleep over five hours each night, which makes things considerably easier on us.  Not much else is going on for us right now… more soon!

I’ve grown tired of this WordPress theme, so over the next week or so I’ll be selecting a new one.  Nobody be surprised if they visit the blog and it looks totally different, I’ll be experimenting with some new templates so it might change dramatically day-to-day.  There’s not much else to report right now, Tasha and I had a chiropractor’s appointment today and then went out to lunch.  After coming back home, we took a nice long nap (so did Eve!) and spent a casual afternoon around the house.  Tonight we discovered that Netflix has The X-Files, so we’ll be watching our way through that now.

More soon!

Ten years ago yesterday, one of my favorite authors passed away.  Douglas Adams wrote the five book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, among other excellent sci-fi series.  He holds a special place in my heart because his work was one of the first things that Tasha and I bonded over when we began dating.  He was a quirky, eccentric guy and while I didn’t subscribe to his beliefs (he referred to himself as a “radical atheist”) I shared his passion for technology and penchant for the weird.

So long, Douglas… and thanks for all the fish.