Etta Mae Thomas was born on March 20th, 2009 at 4:03pm. She weighs 7lbs, 7oz and is 19 inches long. She seems very peaceful and healthy.
All posts by tim
At the Hospital
So after a rather exciting morning we’re at the hospital. Julie woke up at 4:45, but I didn’t get up until she took a shower around 7am. We waited until Julie’s Doctors office opened and headed over. They validated that Julie was indeed in labor. We both knew that already. So we got ourselves across the street to the hospital as fast as possible. Some stuff occurred. Lah, lah, lah. And Julie has her epidural now, and we’re hanging. The Doc is currently in surgery so they’re not going to get this party going for a bit. So we’re just relaxing. Happy for the miracles of modern science that have Julie currently out of pain.
My beautiful rock-star wife!
We feel like poop.
Julie and I feel like poop. The baby has not arrived yet. I’m working a lot on my (actually monkey-making) venture BuyPlayTix. I have a blog for it – http://blog.buyplaytix.com.
I wrote a great post on religion and how people who don’t believe in Christianity don’t call themselves Christians anymore thanks to the preponderance of extremists in the Republican party. But that post got eaten. 🙁
Maybe I’ll rewrite it at some point.
Valentines
Kind of did a low key valentines day yesterday. Julie had a murder mystery, so I scrambled to come up with a menu and then drove off to Central Market. It was a quick trip. Got home and Julie left for work. I did some prep and then Stella and I made chocolate covered strawberries. It was a lot of fun. Especially when she held up her hands to me and said, “ooohhh, dirty”. To which I replied, “Stella, we’re making candy, the best part is dirty hands. Lick them off!” Anyway, I got kind of crafty with the strawberries and here they are:
Obama can travel through time!
Bedtime
Tonight’s bedtime was classic Stella. She took a shower, decide to read “Henry Huggins” by Beverly Cleary (even though she seems completely uninterested in it) and then we started our routine. She has to go pee right after she goes to bed. Then I tuck her in, and change out her binky. She almost immediately calls me back for water. Then she yells that she has to go potty. We yell back, “Go potty, already. We’re not restraining you ankle chains!” This time she’ll go again. I have no clue how she manages to go to the bathroom twice in rapid succession, but she does. Then we go back, change out her binky and tuck her in. 2 minutes later she’ll be screaming for more water, chaning out her binky, and tucking in again. At this point she’s used her allotted trips for the night (she has 2 trips to the potty, and two unrelated trips in from dad).
Tonight as I was tucking her in the last time I said:
“Now Stella, this is the last time I’m coming in.”
To which she replied:
“Yeah, I really need to get some sleep.”
‘Cause I’m the one keeping her awake…
Stimulus Watch
This is a pretty cool project – http://www.stimuluswatch.org/. You can vote on what you think should be stimulus priorities. So here goes with mine:
Boardwalk on Lady Bird Lake – so important. If you don’t think so try heading East from South Congress on the hike and bike trail. Then try not to get hit by a car as you walk through the lovely Austin American Statesman parking lot. Also enjoy the exhaust as you go over IH-35. Mmmmm…. tasty.
Waller Creek Tunnel Project – not as critical to me, but it would be nice to not have a river of basically sewage running through the middle of downtown Austin. I’m not as passionate about having a river walk as I am about having a nice way to get from the middle of downtown to the hike and bike trail easily. I always feel weird running through the middle of downtown in my running clothes.
Burnet Road Sidewalk Project – I am passionate about sidewalks. Because I really want them to be there when I need them.
East 7th Street upgrades – This is one of the main entryways to East Austin. Having spent a lot of time at the Off Center I can tell you that there are a lot of accidents and problems on this road. I believe this is also where we’ve had a number of child fatalities crossing the road. This is near a grocery store too, so we’re talking about sidewalks that get used.
North Lamar Sidewalk Project – I’m still passionate about sidewalks. This is also a low income area served by one of the most useful buses in Austin. The ADA accessibility is a must. I have trouble on a lot of these sidewalks in town with a jogging stroller. I don’t want to think about it with a wheelchair.
South 1st Street Side Walks – People actually walk on this street. A lot. Why don’t we have awesome sidewalks…?
Roy Guerrero Colorado River Park – This is in my neighborhood so I’m biased, but it does essentially extend the hike and bike trail to 183. And it’s just a beautiful park. I highly recommend it. We saw deer last time we were there. I can’t wait for the trail to be finished. While I like Town Lake, the natural beauty of the Colorado River is truly stunning.
Bowie Street Bicycle and Pedestrian Tunnel – Again, I highly believe that people don’t walk when they can’t get places. Build them tunnels and they will use them. I believe this is part of the Waller Creek plan.
William Cannon Sidewalk from Pleasant Valley to IH-36 Again, lots of poorer people. Multiple traffic fatalities. This is just a no brainer. The fact that you can’t walk from your house to the grocery store in the area is just ridiculous.
Brodie Lane Sidewalks from Travis County Line to Slaughter – I believe in sidewalks, what can I say. This just makes sense as Brodie has become like the Lamar of Far South Austin.
Lamar Street Bridge Lighting – I’m trying to figure out why people would vote against lighting the Lamar Street Bridge. This is really important for pedestrians in the winter months and when it’s foggy over the river.
AISD – Provide Access to Broadband to Low Income Students – As someone who makes a lot of money due to the fact that my parents had a computer and modem when I was very young, I strongly support efforts to get low income students access to technology.
Cap Metro – More Buses – I cannot argue with Cap Metro having more buses. More buses mean more trips. More trips mean more convenience. More convenience means more people using the bus.
Cap Metro – Rails and Trails – Add hike and bike trails along the red line. I think this is one of the best ideas I’ve seen in a long time. Even though I may disagree with how useful the red line is, having a hike and bike trail that cuts through Austin in this manner is a great idea. It would make riding your bike into town from Leander feasible and safe. It would make it trivial to walk from a restaurant downtown to see a show at the Off Center.
Cap Metro Signage Project – This is extremely important. The idea is to create a unique ID for each bus stop in Austin. You could then call a number to find out schedule times based on the exact stop you’re at. You’d memorize your home stop number and you’d never be lost again. This will improve service and make it easier to ride CapMetro.
So tell me, what would your priorities be? Which of mine do you think are silly?
Awesome Electrician
We needed a few electrical projects done around the house. The fan in the babies room was not particularly stable, and we want to put a ceiling fan in our living room, so we started asking around for recommendations. My boss gave me one he’d used that was an offshoot of a local lawn care company. I had them come out to do an estimate. The guy spent probably twenty minutes with me, and a week later we still haven’t gotten a written estimate or a phone call.
So we ended up calling two other electricians we were recommended. On Ashley’s recommendation we ended up going with Lyon’s Electric. They came out this morning. They were great. Three guys come out for an hourly rate. It’s obvious they work together all the time and that these weren’t just some flakey guys the master electrician had picked up to work for the day.
They did a great job doing all the projects at the same time. They put down mats to protect the floor. And they were done in an hour. I felt really bad we didn’t have more projects. We’d scaled down our expectations because we thought they’d be really expensive.
We’re definitely going to be calling them again.
Values
Bill O’Reilly:
“I didn’t like the bit [in President Obama’s speech] about having to sacrifice our values to protect ourselves because sometimes we have to”
Sort of like how Republicans are against murdering innocent gran’babbies, except in cases where their daughters get knocked up and their political careers are on the line. The Republicans party folks.
Riverside HEB
So, there has long been talk about making the Riverside HEB into an HEB-Plus. My previous encounter with this sort of HEB was the Slaughter and Manchaca location. They basically took an HEB about the size of the Riverside store and added a little bit of space on it so they could fill it with Walmart style cheap stuff. I wasn’t really looking forward to the remodel until I met to pickup Stella from her grandparents at the Leander HEB-Plus a few weekends ago. It is visually appealing. It has a nice cafe. It does not look like a Walmart crammed into an HEB. So I was excited about getting an HEB-Plus at Riverside again. Julie says she won’t be visiting, but they’re building a bike path under Riverside so I’ll probably head out there once that’s done (and I finally purchase a helmet).
Then this week we drove by on the way to some theatre and noticed the Burger King is gone. My conversations about the HEB upgrade used to go like this:
Me: They’re going to upgrade the HEB at Riverside to an HEB-Plus.
Them: Where are they going to put it.
Me: They’re going to take over the parking lot behind the store.
Them: There’s a Burger King there.
And they always said it with finality. Like the fact there was a Burger King there meant that there could never be any change. Ever. So the Burger King is gone. And they have tons of construction permits and HR posters all over the place. It looks like they’re finally building it.
Here’s hoping for one of the nice stores. Coupled with light rail that HEB could probably become the HEB for central austinites who can’t afford Whole Foods. Does anyone else have any hope that they’ll build a nice store there?