Pardon Me

I was checking out the blog archive earlier and realized that my blogging activity has severely declined this year.  In 2008 I had 63 posts, followed by 54 in 2009.  Here we are at the end of August and this is post 17 for the year.  Of course I like to think that it's quality, not quantity that matters.  Actually I'm not sure there is much quality here either, but I guess I will keep doing this as long as people keep reading it.  For another perspective on life, you can read my sister's new blog.  She already posted twice this week, and I think her blog is prettier than mine as well.  This last weekend was eventful.  Friday I left Tiffany and Ethan at home and headed to New Braunfels for some quality time with Rock and Roll.  Tiffany was originally supposed to go with me, but she was unable to get off work.  We had a heart to heart about how I didn't love her enough to miss these shows.  She totally understood where I was coming from.  Friday I went with my cousin Chris (technically a cousin's husband) to see a rare acoustic performance by the Toadies.  It was at Whitewater Amphitheatre with a small crowd of 300 people.  I have honestly never seen a show quite like this, but it was amazing.  The show only lasted about an hour, but it was a fantastic performance.  The tickets weren't expensive, and I definitely feel like I got my money's worth.  They may never play a show like that again.  Saturday night we went to Gruene Hall with a group of people to check out Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights.  I have been meaning to check these guys out for a while, and I am really glad that I finally did.  They are kind of the love child of southern blues and 70s guitar rock.  They're from the Dallas area.  If you haven't heard of them already, you will.  Maybe that should say you have heard of them, because I just told you about them.  After two days of rock, I made it home in time to spend the afternoon with my family.  I think they were happy to see me.  Yesterday was just another day at work.  It is starting to get into the busy season.  All the kids are back in school passing germs back and forth.  The holidays will be here before we know it.  I have spent the morning finalizing out New York theater schedule.  We have some pretty good shows picked out this time.  I will discuss them specifically in a future blog.  I have thrown in a couple of shots of Ethan for good measure.  There will be more to come shortly.  Finally, I recommend that you all try Godiva red velvet truffles.  They will be available tomorrow, or sooner if you are able to sweet talk the girl behind the counter.  They are heavenly.

Take Two Beers and Jump

I have been trying to get a picture of Ethan standing up or walking for a couple of weeks now.  He is now walking (running) very well now, but he is hard to catch with the camera sometimes.  Things are good at the Murray household.  Last weekend my mother was here.  She hung out with Ethan on Friday so Tiffany and I could go out.  We went to see the Toadies play at a bar here in town.  As always, the band was terrific.  Another plus is that they didn't get shut down this time.  I'm not still holding a grudge.  Despite the torrential downpour we had that night, there was still a good crowd.  Being soaking wet didn't stop me from having fun.  If I was going to guess how many times I have seen this band, it's around 20.  I would probably rank this as one of their best.  The setlist was fantastic, inluding a great cover of The Beatles' Don't Let Me Down.  I am looking forward to an acoustic show in New Braunfels at the end of the month.  Saturday night we had the extended family out for steaks.  It was a good chance to visit, although most people just watched Ethan do his thing.  Now that he has mastered the art of walking, he has moved on to climbing.  He is not going to be happy until he has conquered every piece of furniture in the house.  It probably won't be long though.  He is freakishly tall.  According to my official measuring stick, he is over 5 inches taller than I was at a year old.  Maybe that means something and maybe it doesn't.  He is already able to reach things on the kitchen countertops if they are close enough to the edge.

I have divided my time the last two days between cleaning up around the house and planning our trip to New York.  One of these things is fun.  The other one isn't.  We already have the hotel and flights booked.  Now I am trying to figure out what we are going to do while we are there.  I'm not really worried that we'll be bored.  We do like the theater, so that is definitely on the agenda.  I already have a few shows in mind.  Also, I would like to get tickets to see Jimmy Fallon.  I watch his show almost everyday, and he just keeps getting funnier.  I will gladly take suggestions for anything worthwhile.  We have pretty much done the tourist stuff, so I am looking for things that might not be as common.  I got a book that has a bunch of New York oddities.  I have bookmarked several of them.

I need to get back to something productive, but I would like to give props to Jet Blue's Steve Slater.  Since witness accounts vary, who knows how much of his story is true?  He's already been charged with two felonies, but anyone who works with the public has had days when they felt just like this.  I say cut the guy some slack.

Rent This Space!

Ethan--the opposite of packing

Lots of new things happened since my last blog.  Ethan took his first steps, had his first haircut, and flew in a plane for the first time.  Up until a couple of weeks ago, we had only seen him take steps by accident.  Then one night he realized he was walking.  Now he is practically running everywhere.  He is also running into things, but he doesn't seem to mind.  He does look a little like an abused child, but how else is he going to learn that running into walls sometimes hurts?  We took him to get a haircut so that he would look presentable at my cousin's wedding.  He was well behaved the whole time.  He just sat there like nothing was going on.  I still cry sometimes when I get a haircut.  We spent last weekend in Minneapolis.  The wedding went off well, and we got to hang out with the family a little bit.  We let Ethan stay up late on Friday night since he was enjoying himself so much on the dance floor.  He has excellent dancing skills.  We only had one problem.  While the rest of us were doing the YMCA, he was doing the YYYY.  We will work on that for next time.  I am hoping that someone got some pictures of all of this.  I have nothing except a couple of shots that I took with my phone.  It was a short trip, but Ethan handled the plane ride without incident.  Mostly he just slept.  I'm prepared to say at this point that he is ready to travel the world.  We don't have any big family trips planned at the moment, but I am ready to go whenever.  For now, I will just settle for going to work.

The Pacifier

Once again I have a million things to blog about and not enough hours in the day.  Here are a few pictures from the first birthday party.  Yes, I know it was three weeks ago.

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an orange on a toothpick

'Twas the night before Friday and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except me.  I can't sleep.  I probably shouldn't be tired anyway--it's only 10:30.  Lately I find myself going to bed much earlier than I used to.  This is where it all begins I guess.  Pretty soon I'll be eating dinner at 4 in the afternoon and complaining about the weather.  The truth is that I've been a grouchy old man for a long time.  I was off today, and I had every intention of getting something posted on the blog earlier.  I spent a great deal of the afternoon at the computer, sorting through the last year's worth of photos.  People with children take a ridiculous number of pictures.  I have some shots that are just the same thing over and over, each one barely distinguishable from the previous one.  After all that, I didn't get anything written.  Now I am sitting at my laptop in the dark and have completely forgotten what I was going to write earlier.  I'm not much of a rough draft kind of guy anyway.  Sometimes I do have an idea in my head, but mostly these words just spew forth like diarrhea of the mouth (or keyboard).  Occasionally I check for spelling errors, but often I don't even bother to read what I have written.  I will admit to occasionally editing or rewording something after its original posting based on readers comments.  A good blog, like a song, is always a work in progress.

Ethan's first birthday party went just fine.  I'm going to say there were 15 to 20 people here.  We scrapped the original plan to cook hotdogs and hamburgers, and instead picked up a boatload of barbecue from Betty Rose's.  The food was delicious, and there was enough left that I ate it for about four days afterwards.  We even had to throw some potato salad away.  I just couldn't look at it anymore.  We also have a ton of new and irritating toys to play with.  I don't know why these things don't have volume control on them.  Speaking of annoying sounds, the backup battery in our security system chose last weekend to die.  I called ADT.  They told me how easy it was to change out.  What they didn't tell me is how difficult it would be to find the replacement.  Actually, it wasn't hard at all, but the only place in town that carries them was closed on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for the holiday.  I need a job like that.  The problem here is that the alarm panel feels the need to remind me every four hours that the battery is low.  No amount of reasoning would make it stop beeping.  I did MacGyver some tape on there to make it quieter, but every four hours is pretty extreme.  Somehow it didn't wake the baby though.  Other than the complete lack of sleep, we did have a good fourth of July.  We spent the evening in Merkel with Mike and Elizabeth, stuffing our faces with shrimp.  Ethan managed to get a few bites down, but he was mostly just excited to see his cousins and hang out.  I am pretty sure he ate carrot cake and ice cream though.  Tuesday morning we woke up early.  On the way to see the pediatrician for Ethan's one year visit, we made a quick stop at the battery store.  The doctor's visit went well.  Here are the vital stats for anyone keeping track:  21 lbs., 7 oz., 31 3/4 inches long.  They also took a measurement of his head.  I am going to assume it is normal size, but mostly because I don't remember the number.  It wouldn't matter if I did anyway.  Who knows the measurements of a normal size head?  Ethan had to endure four shots.  He wasn't happy about it, but he did survive.  They said that at this point everything looks normal.  No doubt that this has everything to do with our superior gene pool and excellent parenting skills.  One more thing for those of you that don't read the Enquirer--my sister got married a couple of weeks ago.  It's a good story, but I don't want to think about it anymore.  Congratulations Callie and John.

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Dr. Acula

At the beginning of last week, Ethan was sick.  The daycare called.  Tiffany picked him up and took him to the doctor.  He was running a fever, but they couldn't any sign of infection or anything.  They drew blood twice before deciding that their lab equipment wasn't working correctly.  Then Ethan and Tiffany had to drive to another office so they could take whatever blood he had left.  Fortunately I was at work this whole time and missed out on all of the screaming.  I did go the next day to find out the results.  The results were this:  routine viral infection, keep fever down with Tylenol.  The poor baby was hot to the touch, which is amazing since he was now missing so much blood.  He obviously didn't feel well, since he didn't even want to do much but be held.  After a couple of days, he seemed to feel better.  His appetite returned to normal, and by the weekend he was ready to begin his next adventure.  I do think it's interesting that the daycare won't keep sick kids.  Everybody knows that's where he got the germs in the first place.  As the weekend rolled around, we prepared for our little road trip.  Saturday afternoon we drove to Buda to visit Tiffany's sister.  The sun was in full effect, so we checked out the neighborhood pool while we were there.  Ethan enjoyed the water a lot more than I expected him to.  He has no fear of the water, which may not be a good thing.  We went out to dinner that night, and Ethan proceeded to flirt with all of the waitresses.  Afterwards we drove into Austin for some Amy's Ice Cream.  It was amazing as always.  Sunday after eating some killer breakfast burritos, we headed loaded back up and headed for The Woodlands.  We arrived about mid-afternoon and spent a little time visiting with Em, Ryan, and the girls before heading for the Toyota Center.  Ethan agreed to be good while we were gone.  On th way to the show, we stopped off at Pappasito's for some Mexican food and margaritas.  I will gladly recommend the pulled pork enchiladas.  Sunday was my 14th time to see Tool (8 for Tiffany) and I am looking forward to my 15th time.  They are that good.  In addition to another great performance, we ran into my friend Jeremy.  After the show was over, we met him at La Carafe and discussed life and music over a bottle of wine.  We made it back to The Woodlands around 1:30 AM.  Surprisingly, nobody at the O'Shaughnessy house waited up for us.  Apparently Ethan did fine without us.  Emily insists that he was not any trouble.  We may never know the truth.  Monday we made the trip home.  We hit up Shipley's on the way out of town.  They may be a bit overrated, but have you really ever had a bad donut?  I guess that pretty much brings you up to speed.  Yesterday I went to work.  Today I went to work.  Tomorrow I will go to work.  Friday, work.  This is what I call future blogging.  I am now covered for a few more days.  I haven't figured out how to take future pictures yet.  Saturday will be Ethan's first birthday party.  Technically he won't be a year old until Tuesday, but guess what we are doing on Tuesday--work.

"Every picture is of you when you were younger."  --Mitch Hedberg

For Emily:

I was wrong about the cousin thing.  You and I are first cousins.  You and Ethan are first cousins once removed.  Molly and Allie are second cousins to Ethan.  There is also way more to this cousin thing than you even want to know.  It requires some skill in mathematics and a detailed family tree.  There are such things as double cousins, half cousins, and double-half cousins, among others.  Thanks again for letting us stay with you.

For Sarah:

I'm not ignoring you.  You can call me tomorrow, or perhaps I may call you tonight.  It wasn't my fault.  There are worldly factors that are beyond my control.  If your name isn't Sarah, stop reading this.  You don't know what I'm talking about anyway.

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Reality?

I don't even know where to start.  Let's just just jump right in.  Ethan's newest trick is that he can open every drawer in the house.  It's not a great trick.  The cat used to do it all the time.  Speaking of the cat, what do they make feline cuisine out of?  I only ask because dogs seem to prefer it to their own food, and babies don't seem to mind it either.  Mostly Ethan likes to play with it, but he has managed to sneak a couple of bites.  At least he isn't a picky eater.  This week he has also had a healthy dose of asparagus, beets, and a few other things that most people won't eat.  In dental related news, he finally has a couple of teeth coming in.  His two bottom front teeth are poking through just a little bit.  I am quite relieved.  Last week he was drooling like Niagara Falls.  I can't believe Pampers hasn't invented a product for this.  The drool seems to have subsided for now, and other than being a little cranky for a couple of days we came out unscathed.

"The Rant"
So I come home from work the other night, and Tiffany is watching a show called Toddlers and Tiaras.  It should be called White Trash Parents Who Dress Their Kids Like Hookers & Pimps.  Basically this show is about beauty pageants for children.  When I say children, I don't mean teenagers.  They actually have a category for 12 to 24 month old kids.  Anyone that would whore their kids out like that deserves to be shot.  The highlight of this particular episode was a five year old girl with a spray tan and an $1100 dress.  I'm going to leave it at that.  The rest of the things I have to say on this subject are probably not blog appropriate.  I will mention that this show was immediately followed by something called I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant.  You guessed it.  Somehow these people go nine months without any idea.  Reality TV is making people stupider; it has to be stopped.  Maybe we need a reality show where we round up all of these morons and put them in a Roman coliseum and let them fight each other to the death.  Maybe we could throw some tigers in there for good measure.  That would at least be entertaining.  Consider that my contribution to overpopulation.  I have a few other ideas as well, but I will save them in case I need future blog material.



Ok, I'm over it.  I feel much better now.  Tiffany should be home from work shortly.  We are going to hit the party store in preparation for the first birthday celebration going on here in a couple of weeks.  I still think first birthday parties are stupid, but I have been outvoted by all of the women on the planet.  I am sure Ethan won't remember it.  I only remember one birthday party from my entire life, and I was at least ten.  If nothing else, I guess it gives us a reason to show off how cute our baby is.  He is adorable when he isn't acting like a little devil.  The adorable comes from me, so I guess his mother is to blame for the other part.  There will be more details to follow on this whole ordeal.