November 20th 2002 21:30CST

Happy Birthday. In twelve months you have evolved from a journal to a blog. My gift to you is a makeover with handcrafted HTML. I bought myself a book you see.

November 19th 2002 15:50CST

Observations for today:

Squirrels deliberately taunt dogs.
ATT Broadband is crap - great when it works, but crap otherwise.
Related to above - I wish you could pull the little progress bar.
I've started redoing yatescentral.com.
Baby poop looks like spinach.
I hate dead leaves.
I'm lazy.
Babies bounce (just kidding).

Current favorite joke:

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting cow.
Inter-
Moo.

It's all in the timing.

November 18th 2002 12:05CST

I could write about any one of three things today; in wonderment abut the empathy of canines, amazement that I'm so relaxed with the baby or about celebrities stalking me. Given the distinct lack of humor recently in the dramatic run-up to Nic's arrival, let's talk celebrity stalking.

It started with a dream a couple of months ago whereby Madonna was stalking my every move. Weird, but not notable really. The next instance was personal email from Jeff Bezos asking me to head over to amazon.com to check out books that he thought I might be interested in. I was waiting for Katherine Zeta Jones to text message my cell phone but it never happened, so that is noteworthy; I must be the only cell phone subscriber in the US who hasn't been texted by her. Maybe she just lost my number. KZJ; I'll email it to you.

Then the other day, out of the blue, I received an email from Cyndi Lauper. Imagine the scene. Kenny wakes up and groggily makes his way into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He puts the kettle on and meanders back to his computer to do his morning surf. After he's deleted all his Chinese and Korean spam, he notices an email from Cyndi Lauper. A small whoop of delight resonates around the house, drowned by the sound of the kettle boiling. Kenny quickly runs to the kitchen puzzling as to where Cyndi Lauper had got his email address from, what she wanted, why him and why now...after all, she'd never contacted him 16 years ago when he was besotted with her (along with Kate Bush and whole raft of others - typical teenage crushes). So, as he makes his tea, he's thinking how he will respond to this request to elope (which he's figured out it must be)...

Dear Cyndi, I'm really sorry but I really can't elope with you now...I have a wife, two kids and a third little boy who is due any moment...can you imagine the devastation that would ensue were I to elope with you now? You know sixteen years ago, when I was but a kid and you were singing True Colors to me everywhere I drove, it would have been a different matter. So it's not to be I'm afraid. However, if you are short of a date, my father-in-law's kids are all grown and he still loves you. Take care. Love and stuff, Kenny. xxx

Of course, upon having constructed this mental response, he opens the email and it's spam. He notices the give-away - Cyndi Laupar not Lauper. Now miserable that he can't blow off Cyndi Lauper, he wonders about the genius marketeer that came up with the idea of targetting thirty-something males with emails from eighties female temptresses. Brilliant. Brilliant but cruel.

Cyndi has emailed me a couple of times since, but it's always the same.

So, in a pre-emptve strike:

Dear Madonna, Siouxsie Sioux, Kate Bush, Katherine Zeta Jones, Louise Lombard, Tori Amos et al, please don't call, email, text me or write...I'm happily married with kids now. You blew your respective chances half a lifetime ago. Go wreck someone else's home. Oh, and Katherine, I told you that would happen, marrying such a senile, old codger. Love and hugs, Kenny. xxx

November 17th 2002 11:30CST

Here he is...born at 01:13 this morning, weighing 7lb 8oz and measuring 20".

November 16th 2002 21:30CST

Waiting, waiting, waiting. For the baby, for AT&T to fix the bloody connection speed (at the moment a whopping 70bps- yawn). To pass the time, I have started rejigging the layout a little (having finally bought a book on HTML after years of hacking it).

This is what I have come up with for the blog.

What do you think?

November 12th 2002 21:30CST

So symmetry came and went and there are no more signs of El Sproggo. I do hope that El Sproggo doesn't have the same effect on the weather as El Nino. I'd hate to have the tree-hugging population pointing their vegetarian fingers at me cursing my offspring.

I went to pick up the birthing pool yesterday. You need to be a Brit to appreciate the directions I was given; "blah blah 35W South, blah 494E, blah 77 South...Jonny Cake Ridge Road, Pilot Knob Drive." Hilarious - tell me that is not comedy! It reminds me of an idea that I've had for a while now; a bit of code that names your new found homestead in the US.  First, you take one of the following (using a random seed):

Cedar, Green, Grand, Apple, Golden, Oak, Elk, Diamond, Crystal, New, Pilot

Then you take another seed and select one of the following:

Falls, Rapids, Gates, Woods, River, Rock, Prairie, Park, Hope, Knob, Creek, Lake

What this gives you is your very own town name (eg Golden Knob) - you might want to prepend "big" onto the results (eg Big Golden Knob) just for the hell of it, or well, really to emphasise that the pesky motherland is so darned small. You can then rapidly (no pun intended) declare it a city (due to the fact that you brought your dog with you and you need everyone paying city tax). You can then appoint yourself mayor as the dog can't vote, declare yourself a federal disaster area when it snows, and clean up on taxing dog poop. Brilliant. I wish I had been born 250 years ago.

Disclaimer: Apologies to any township whose name can be generated from the above. I like the US really, quite a lot. Apologies if you were the person who gave me directions. I guess you have to be British to see the humor (either that or as bitter and twisted as me).

November 10th 2002 18:00CST

I'm stuck in an infinte loop. I'm sat waiting for the birth to begin and to kill the time, I'm doing the same genealogical searches that I've done a million times before, just to see if the information has been updated. I'm seeing the same names, same dates, cross-referencing them to my written notes and our web tree. I've Shop-Vac'd the car, been to Target, picked Sam up from the airport and all the time, my brain has been locked on the same three topics; the family past, the family future and the physics of giving birth.

As is well documented, I'm not religious in the slightest. The one thing that I hope beyond all else is that when we finally part from our bodies is that we have a perfect understanding and collective memory of all our predecessors. I want to know my great-grandfather and all his predecessors. I want to know if those people know about now, about Lori, about Bean, about Natzoid, about Nicholas, about Sam. I want to know their reactions to my actions. I want to put faces to the names that haunt me. And yes, I want to see my grandfather again.

I sometimes want to fast-forward to when my kids are grown to see how they interact. I want to see my grandkids. I want to know if I can live up to the standards that have been set for me. I sometimes think that I make a lousy parent, but I can see myself being the coolest grandad on the block. I wonder if I will keep this log going for my kids to see or whether I'll be too embarassed with being mortal to show them. I wonder whether the archive bots that patrol will keep this for some future generation or descendent to use in their search for their vicarious past.

I've been suffering from empathy today which is something I'm sure I generally don't have. I, out of the blue, have imagined what it must be like to give birth. I could feel the muscles stressing, the pressure, the push. I'm sure I wouldn't cope.

So my loop consists of the above three threads. All this waiting makes me too introspective. Back to genealogy...

Oh, and I know it will be tomorrow. 11/11/2002 has too much symmetry to be ignored.

November 9th 2002 19:30CST

Within a couple of days, if not a matter of hours, I'm going to be the father of a little boy. The thought of dealing with a boy growing up scares me; I always said that I wouldn't want a boy because I know how little boys think which is not that much different to adult males. The contra-positive applies too. Grown men think like kids and I have never felt more like a kid than now.

The last time I looked, I was 21 and just starting work. Every now and again, I stop to take stock. In the last twelve years I've traveled to more countries than I remember, had some great times, learned a lot, been married, nearly had a nervous breakdown, been divorced, moved continents and married again, this time thankfully very happily.

Aside; I spoke to a colleague of mine recently who I met during the lowest point in the last twelve years who commented that every time he speaks to me, I sound happier and happier - it's true and it's amazing that it took someone pointing that out to make me take stock and realize it's true. Don't know if he reads this or not, but if he does "thanks - I owe you a great deal". This guy has been a rock over the last few years.

Aside over with, since being 21, I have witnessed birth twice. The process scared me beyond belief both times in clinical, sterile, emotional voids. Both times, my family have been miles away (in the case of The Bean, several thousand). And so it will be with Nicholas. There will be Natzoid, Bean, the midwives, Sam if she's home and me. The difference is that this time it's at home and this time it's a boy. Those three words echo resonantly around my head - it's a boy.

So bye-bye 21, hello 33 and hello to sproggo 3. Sometimes it all kind of gets to you doesn't it? Reality. It's a harsh mistress. I just hope I don't cry like I did when Lori and Zoe were born. And I hope it's quicker.

November 6th 2002 19:15CST

<rant>

I don't wish to appear churlish, but I feel a bit of a churl coming on. We have bigger things to think of than Iraq. Out of four music channels, we have three with Eminem on them. This cannot be good. What are the Republicans going to do about that? That is more of a threat to our youth than Sadaam ever will be. For the record, just in case you didn't know, I find Sadaam's morals and rhetoric more appealing than Eminem's. The fact that this is allowed on radio stations is an insult to all that is good in the world. If I got a good lock on him, I'd take one for the team and blow his worthless arse into the next dimension no matter what the consequences. Lordy, I could seriously go off on this, but I'll contain myself...I may even start a blog on blogspot to document my utter loathing of the brain-dead fuckwit.

</rant>

November 6th 2002 08:45CST

Heard on MPR this morning; "Clearly voters understand that we will not raise taxes and that we will win the war on terrorism." What do these people smoke? How much does war cost? Where do we get the money for the various wars we must fight. Ah yes...the massive budget surplus that is sitting in each state's coffers, not. How very depressing.

November 3rd 2002 18:30CST

<guy post>

I'm in love. $50 bought us a Shop-Vac. The thing is the biggest top-quality beast of a vacuum cleaner I have ever seen. It's so into cleaning that it doesn't want to switch off. You hit the start button and it starts sucking up everything in the room. You hit the stop button and it pauses until you take your finger off the switch and then roars back into life. Some might call this a dodgy switch. I call it commitment; the thing wants to carry on. I love it. I love it. I love it.

If I were superstitious, I would say that our Cyclone ($200 piece of s**t) had been so insulted by the talents of the Shop-Vac that it lost its will to live. However I'm not and I know that the real reason that it stopped working is just because it is such a piece of c**p. I will never fall for marketing again when it comes to vacuums.

So, the Shop-Vac rules. In four hours Natzoid and I have got the house cleaner than it has ever been and it looks great. The midwife arrived and I swear there wasn't a dog hair in sight. Tonight we get the sleep of the just. And tommorrow, the kids will ruin it, but it was nice for a few hours! I feel obliged to say that if you need a vacuum for $50, get down to Target and get the 10 gallon Shop-Vac. I wouldn't be surprised if I mutter its name in my sleep. That's how excellent this damned thing is. I may even take a photo of it.

</guy post>

November 2nd 2002 12:30CST

This is a great idea. If anyone wants to babysit all our kids and dogs (and while you're here you could maybe fix the blacktop), please let us know. We'll be ever so grateful. Honest.

Anyway, house cleaning awaits..."Hommmmmmmmmm"

November 1st 2002 08:30CST

The thing of it is, one's blog is written by one's alter-ego, a small bi-polar penguin with a hang-up about his residence. The penguin is called Fritz and he lives in the Tundra (as is evidenced from the title). Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead, drunk, sober, or even having a slight piscatory whiff about them is purely coincidental.

In order to expunge the negativity, one has evicted one's penguin pal, Fritz. Normal service will not be resumed. All future posts will have an adjunct of one's patented "Surf and SniffTM" module which will lend the reader a vague scent of roses and parsley. One will not be disappointed. One is also considering adding a background sound of some kind of insipid world music in order to ease one's readers fully into a full soporific trance and to foster some kind of endorphin driven addiction.