Category: Life

In case you forgot, Paige’s birthday is April 15^th. She’ll be… ehh… one year younger than me. Obviously, she deserves lots of gifts for being an all around great wife and mother. I told her yesterday I was going to buy everything on her wishlist. Of course, she refused. Since I don’t want to get on her bad side, I’m trying a different approach.

I’ve already done my part to make sure she has a happy birthday. If you want to help out, here’s a link to Paige’s Amazon Wishlist. If you ignore the ottomans, there’s really not much left to buy. Just some kitchen gadgets and a few books. I think 11 days should be plenty of time to empty that list.

So, whether you’re a friend or just visiting the site to read the tutorials, help me out by picking up an item or two…

Yesterday night Paige, Matthew, and I went over to Ben and Paula’s house to visit their new baby Jackson Paul Alsup. He was born on March 24 at 2:23pm, weighted 8lbs 9oz, and was 21 inches long. This was the first time we had Matthew and Jackson together, so we took a few pictures.

Here’s a better picture of just Jackson. You can see that Ben is bringing his boy up right. That’s Ben with the “Dukes of Hazzard” t-shirt on.

Oh well, I guess that’s a better influence than the “Southpark” shirt he used to wear…

I’m guessing no one reads these posts anymore since I didn’t get any comments about what I wrote yesterday. It’s obviously an April Fool’s joke, but I though it was pretty funny. I’m sure there’s some poor soul out there right now afraid to touch their keyboard. Hopefully they won’t try hire me to clean up their computer.

In other news, I took another trip to Sulpher Springs today, this time for the District UIL meet. Our Computer Science team took second place. Not too bad considering we never even practiced after school. Jeremy took third place individually, which means he will advance. Unfortunately, only the first place team gets to go on, so the rest of the team will stay home. I’m still debating whether I’ll go or not.

Spring Break is just about over for me, and I’ve gotta say it was pretty nice. I spent the week hanging out with Matthew. I taught him all about guy stuff – we ate when we wanted, slept when we wanted, and mostly just sat around in our pajamas and watched TV. He seems to like Star Trek pretty well, but I think he liked Robotech even more. It was probably all of the explosions and crazy flashing lights.

I don’t think I spent more than 5 minutes a day in front of the computer all last week. Of course, that caught up with me last night when I had to spend about 4 hours catching up on all of my e-mail and checking out the news sites and blogs to see what I missed. People think I just learn everything about computers through osmosis. If they only knew how much time I spend reading and clicking.

I also tried in vain to organize my office. I will conquer this room soon. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The problem right now is that I just have too much stuff. I did something that I said I would never do. I gathered up a box full of books to throw away. I just can’t see keeping books on things like Programming Windows 95 when I don’t even use Windows anymore, much less the ten year old version. A while back we bought another book shelf to put in here, but I still have books piled on my desk and in boxes in the closet. I can’t help it, I’m addicted to books.

I spent most of today working in the yard. I gathered up big bag of newspaper thanks to the gas station up the street from us. I think they must’ve just piled a bunch of papers on the sidewalk and let them all blow away. This was followed by raking, shoveling, mowing, and even using a sledge hammer to break up some concrete. Of course all of that led to a nasty blister on my thumb. I’m basically a whimp when it comes to manual labor.

Hopefully I’ll heal by Monday. I’d hate to have to call in sick the day after a weeks vacation…

Here’s one of my favorite pictures of Matthew:

There’s nothing better than a smiling baby.

Matthew doesn’t sleep all the time. In every other picture I’ve posted he’s either asleep or looking sleepy, so here’s one where he’s wide awake:

He still has a full head of hair and dark blue eyes.

Paige and Matthew are asleep on the couch, so I thought I would upload a few more pictures. Here he is with his eyes open, looking very scared of the camera for some reason:

He does some funny things when he sleeps. Sometimes he pulls the blanket over his head. He also likes to show us his fists while he sleeps:

We took Matthew to the doctor back on the 10th and they said he has already grown an inch and gained a pound. I’m sure he’ll be full grown before we know it.

We’re slowly adjusting to our new way of life now that the baby’s here. I know at one point I used to sleep for 8 hours or more at a time. Now it’s more like 3-4 hours at a time, but that’s OK. It’s all worth it to know that I’m raising my son.

Updates are a little sparse around here right now. We still have tons of pictures to post, but somehow that doesn’t seem very important anymore. Playing with Matthew is a lot more fun that looking at pictures of him on the screen.

Matthew wasn’t my only Christmas present this year. Paige also got me an awsome acoustic / electric guitar. It’s an Ibanez AEG10. Here’s the official picture of it. I’ll eventually post a picture of me playing it.

This, finally, brings up the reason for this post. Now that I have an acoustic guitar, I’m wanting to learn some of the classic acoustic guitar songs. I’m working on a list of my own, but I want to be sure and not miss anything. Here’s what I have in mind so far:

• Eagles – Hotel California
• Kansas – Dust in the Wind
• Animals – House of the Rising Sun

I consider those pretty much the holy trinity of classic acoustic guitar songs. After those, I have lots of other ideas.

• Lots of Dave Matthews Band songs
• Some Beatles songs
• Some Eric Clapton (I love Bell Bottom Blues)
• The songs from Nirvana unplugged
• Some Pearl Jam songs (Elderly Woman…, Yellow Ledbetter, etc.)
• A few Pink Floyd songs (Paige hates most of Pink Floyd)

Now it’s your turn. I need some different stuff to play. Are there any good newer acoustic guitar songs? Let me know what I’m missing…

I would like to introduce the world to our son – Matthew Anderson Lewis. He was born at noon on Christmas Day. He weighed 7 pounds and 12 ounces and was 20 inches long.

Here’s Paige and Matthew on the day he was born:

We spent the rest of Christmas day letting everybody see him and hold him. That night, we took him to the nursery so we could get to sleep. The next morning, we picked him and found that the nurses had put a Christmas hat on him:

We spent the 26th holding him and playing with him. Paige finally got the camera away from me and took my picture:

Finally, on the 27th we got to go home. We dressed him in his nicest gown, and we were ready to go:

We took about 50 pictures while we were in the hospital, but I thought these were the best ones of Matthew. Don’t worry, I’ll post lots more later.

I should really thank all of our friends and family for everything they’ve done over the last week. We haven’t cooked a meal since Matthew was born. It’s been great to not have to worry about day-to-day things and instead focus all of our attention on our wonderful new son.

One more thing before I forget – Happy New Year!

Just when you thought I couldn’t get any geekier…

I just read about this show on Slashdot and I’ve got to go see it. It’s called ‘Dear Friends – Music from Final Fantasy’. Yahoo has the press release.

I probably know most of the Final Fantasy music by heart. I still remember how good those songs sounded coming out the Super NES in stereo (that’s right kids, games didn’t always have surround sound) and going through Ben’s Bose speakers. I can’t imagine what it would sound like live performed by an orchestra.

The only U.S. date so far is in Chicago. They’re calling it a ‘tour’ so surely there will be more shows. If they come anywhere near Texas, I’ll be there. Hopefully they’ll visit the Bass Hall in Fort Worth.