Happy Sunday.

Thanks to Tim and Sue for having us over this afternoon for fun in the backyard! The morning started out being overcast and rainy, and we were worried their party would be cancelled, but as we got closer to their house, the clouds opened up and revealed blue sky. We changed Finn into her swimsuit and she happily spent the next four hours splashing, laughing, and having fun. There were other boys her age to play with, water balloons to throw around, bubbles to blow, and chips to snack on, which made her vibrate with joy.

Because she only got a half-hour nap in the car on the way up there (entirely Papa’s fault), she didn’t react well to the news that it was time to leave, but she sang songs to us quietly on the car ride home. After we got some dinner, I took her for a bike ride around the neighborhood, and we stopped at the playground across the street, where she giggled and laughed on the swing and raced me down the slide until it got dark.

Up The Slide, Down The Slide.

Flickr seems to be chopping the last 20 seconds or so of this video off, so I’ll try to reload it tomorrow.

I don’t think any video could make me any happier.

Oh Hai.

I remember you… from my wedding, right? In the blue dress?

Shiny, Shiny.

Mama has been rocking a 5-year-old Motorola 551 for way too long now, and the replacement battery is nearing its end of life (when it deigns to charge from the wall plug at all). Last Saturday we paddled through the rain to the Apple Store to see if they had any iPhone 4‘s available for her birthday present, but I was unaware that they were so scarce right now. We left empty-handed. I was also going to see about replacing my MBP battery while we were there, but the throngs of people in the store (avoiding the downpour like we were) made that impossible too. At home, I jumped online and ordered a phone, which should be here sometime in the next three weeks.

As mentioned earlier, I took Jen out to dinner Sunday evening at le Petit Louis, a french bistro up in Roland Park, while our kindly neighbors watched Finn. What can I say? My bride was beautiful, the food was delicious, and the atmosphere was perfect. Happy Birthday, baby. Returning to our neighbors’, Finn was happily playing on the slide, while her counterpart had already melted down and gone upstairs for night-nights. She’s completely gotten over her initial fear of the slide, and now spends most of her time at the playground in a constant loop: up the stairs, down the slide. Up the stairs, down the slide.

Tuesday afternoon I went to store.apple.com, picked out a refurbished 15″ MacBook Pro with as many bells and whistles as I could afford (newest processor, RAM, widescreen display, fast video card), squinched up my eyes, and clicked the “buy now” button. It’s been a long time coming, and it took a lot of convincing myself that this was really necessary, but having a laptop that actually has a usable screen, working optical media drive, and functioning battery will be a huge improvement. FedEx says it will be here on Thursday, which is faster than I’d hoped for. I still need to pick up a Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter to run an external display, but a colleague at work tells me there’s a supplier online that has them for considerably less than the $40 Apple is charging.

Lounging.

Lots to discuss about the weekend, but little time to get it down right now. Highlights: Heading over to Ellicott City to spend time with some old college friends, meet some new friends, and have barbecue on the back deck. Also, dinner at Petit Louis with my bride on Sunday, where we noshed on some outstanding French cuisine. More details this evening, hopefully.

All Kinds Of Awesome.

Thanks For Nothing.

I made the mistake of listening to both the local forecasters and the National Weather Service, who all claimed we’d see thunderstorms after 1PM this afternoon but neglected to notice the HUGE FREAKING STORMFRONT that swept through the area early this morning, soaking our lawn, our parched garden, and the Scout, which was parked topless in the driveway.

At least the power came back on after blinking out while we slept.

That’s a Good Question.

Jon Stewart asks the very prescient question: How exactly can Republicans be for deficit reduction and extending the Bush-era tax cuts?

Best line of the whole clip: “THE DEFICIT WANTS TO SKULLFUCK YOUR MOTHER!”

The Runaround.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just dumb, or don’t speak English correctly, or have a short attention span. Whatever the case, I can’t make heads or tails of the Baltimore County Land Records website. All I want to do is get a better copy of the plat for our property, so that I might begin the process of understanding exactly where the fuck my lawn ends and where the neighbors’ begins. The copy of a fax of a copy I have shows a trapezoid with vague and blobby notations of distance, but no point of triangulatory reference for anything except the west corner of our road frontage. Which means our garage could be in someone else’s yard. And there’s no mention of actual distance from the pavement to the beginning of our property, just a smudgy line which could be our hedgerow. Apparently I will need to hire a surveyor, at the approximate cost of one months’ salary, just to nail a ribbon on a tree and say “It’s here”. Before I can do that, I have to get the plat, and in order to do that (as far as I can tell from this suck-ass website) I have to make an appointment, with… somebody. There are names and numbers listed, but none of them say “I’m the guy who will help you get that thing you need”. Searching on their website for the obvious stuff, like “copy of plat” returns a “Google Custom Search Result”, which is quickly becoming Internet shorthand for “we don’t give a rat’s ass about you, and we’re too cheap to catalog anything properly.”

* * *

In the meantime, I’m shopping for a new laptop. Idiot Central, the 17″ MacBook Pro I’ve had for four years, has only sported half a usable screen for the last month or so, and I’m tired of not being able to use it without an external monitor. I’m also really sick and tired of opening my bag to find that it mysteriously woke from sleep and cooked itself like a Hot Pocket. The trackpad button has been sticking in the down position, which means it’s always wanting to select something. It’s still a good, fast machine, so it’ll likely end up as a production unit on my desk, but its days as a primary computer are done. I use a laptop mainly as a travel rig these days, so I’m looking at a 13″ MacBook Pro as a replacement. It’s portable, small, and fast, and I don’t have the extra $500 to pony up for a 15″.

Update: It gets better. Remember how I was talking about the trackpad sticking? I did a little poking around this evening. The trackpad sits directly under the battery compartment.

See that bulge? That means the battery is fooked. It’s been swelling in the center and putting direct pressure on the trackpad above. I guess it bulged to the point where it finally disabled the trackpad completely. The funny thing is, my boss at work, who also has a 17″ MBP of similar vintage, just had his battery replaced today at the Apple Store due to the exact same issue. I have to see if he got it replaced under warranty or not, because I think we may be heading to the Columbia location this weekend, and we may be walking out with a new iPhone, a MacBook Pro, and a replacement battery.

Afternoon Swim.

Yesterday afternoon, after a gaggle of older screaming kids had finally vacated the neighbors’ pool, I called over to see if I could bring Finn for a swim. She knows that Aloha means “hello” because we talk about it when I put on her pink swim shirt and she literally vibrates with excitement when we get near the water.

I set her down on the steps and we both got in slowly, basking in the afternoon sun, until she was up to her chest and I was floating in front of her. Instead of free swimming the whole time like we normally do at the Y, she was content to sit on the steps and watch as I crept up to her toes underwater and surfaced with a loud “Boo!’, which sent her into fits of giggles. Then she would stand up, hold her arms open, yell, “Ready!” and jump into my arms for a brief tour of the shallow end before practicing her paddle back to the stairs, and we would do it all over again.

There was a moment when the sun hit her face as I knelt in front of her, and her blue eyes looked deep into mine, right before she stood up to jump into my arms again. In that moment, I saw the trust she had in me, knowing I would be there to catch her as she made her leap, and I made a quiet promise to myself that I would never let her down. And as her arms wrapped around my neck, the sun warmed my back, and her giggles filled my ears, I felt like the luckiest man on earth.