Sit outside in your garage, or on your patio one night, as severe thunder storms are rolling in.

Have with you, your favourite drink.  I’ve choosen a moderately good scotch.

Set up a comfy chair in the middle of your venue and quietly watch it happen.

Play some music.  I suggest on an AM/FM radio, if something like that still exists.  The interference caused by the nearby lightening can often be interesting.  Listen to the rain hitting the ground, and the trees crying out with the rustling of their leaves.

Feel the thunder as it washes over you, and through you on the particularly close strikes.

Watch the imposing and perhaps agressive clouds marching forward.  So removed from their sunny day cousins.  They bear no particular malice, just the need to release their pent up energy in an blaze of power and sound.

Sit through the lulls and the peaks.  There are often moments of peace among the torrents.  Enjoy them for what they are.  Life in many shades.

Resist the urge to run when it seems overwhelming, and feel your heart beat as your fleeing insticts float near the surface of your conciousness, ready to strike.

Yell back at it if you like.  Yell with the trees and the clouds and throw your energy to the swirling mass.  Tonight I have chosen not to, on another night I will.  Tonight I’ll let it recharge me.

Write a letter if you are so inclined, and see what happens.  It will be different from what you would write if you were sitting inside.  It won’t likely be as rushed.

Do all this my dear, and you will know me slightly better.

I hope one day to do it together.

Love, Dad

I’m sitting outside, in the warm humid air after a summer rain, staring at our backyard.  A Corona to my left and a yellow finch to my right.  He’s chattering away, excited that you and he will be spending the summer together.

You’ve just left for a two day adventure with your mom to a cabin near Minden, Ontario.

This adventure precedes another adventure involving the two of us, “Lily and Daddy: The Summer of Awe”

6 weeks of you and me hanging out in the summer, discovering.  The thought of it leaves me somewhat staggered as it is truly a sentence of epic proportions. 6 weeks of you and me hanging out in the summer, discovering…it needed to be said twice.

I don’t know what will come of us on our many splendid adventures to come.  But I assure you…you will be significantly awed by the things we will see and do together.  Why, there are no less that a bajillion things you can find in our backyard alone.  The sights, the sounds, the life…

Even now I’m surrounded by a finch, chatting to a cardinal, about the dove over by the giant monster tomato plant that shelters the small and brave pepper plant from the wind and the elements.  We’ve got a lot to see young lady and I cannot wait to see it with you and be your guide.

I’m hoping to teach you that the world is an absolutely wonderful place, when you know where to look. Over the coming years I want to teach you that you should never stop looking.  Never stop searching for a new flower, a new bug to befriend, or a new way to walk to the park.

I watch you discovering the world. I see the way you intricately pick up that dehydrated mystery pea…cautiously lick it, tap it on the floor, perhaps wonder for a moment the origin of the pea, then place it ever so gently on the top of your head… I see that and l am reminded that if we never stop looking for new ways of doing things we will never be bored.

You are asleep now, heading northbound on an adventure with mom.

I’m sure you two will learn a lot from each other up there.  Always listen to her, she is a very wonderful person and you will learn a lot from her.  Please do have a lot of fun and come home soon and safe.

We are in for a lot of adventure this summer young miss.
Hold on tight, we have worlds to see.

Love Dad

This Morning’s Scenic Drive to Work
(80 minutes)

Very little jumps to mind as being worthy to write home about in itself.  There have been lots of little things.

Lily Update:

• Lily is nearly walking, and is generally on a path of destruction.  She managed to destroy my computer speakers and basically set them on fire.  Don’t ask me how.  But she was well away before the smoke started pouring out of the subwoofer.

• She has 2 or 3 more teeth coming in.
• She is sleeping in her crib without much fuss.  5 minutes and she is out at night.  Now we can sleep.
• She’s nearly 10 months old.
• I still miss her when I’m at work.

Nerd Update:

• using Unison to backup my Ubuntu home directory to a separate physical drive.  Works well, yet I am having trouble getting it to run as a cron job.  I do not yet know why.
  Update:FIXED
  I needed to provide the absolute path to unison in my backup script.
  So instead of:
  unison Main -silent
  I needed to use:
  /usr/bin/unison Main -silent
• Still liking Ubuntu, though I am wishing I could get EQ2 running properly in wine, so that I can hook up with the old gaming clan for the odd night out in the virtual worlds.
• I don’t particularly need an iPhone.  I’ve got a free Blackberry.
• I do however need new speakers.

Work Update:

• Same old.  Work, program, make things efficient.
• People still baffle me with their approaches to problems and life.  I don’t know how some survive breakfast, let alone make it to work daily.
• Taking some Project management courses in August.

Life Update:

• Weekend BBQ was a success.  Family came over, ate and drank, then went home.  What more can you ask?
• Leaving Lily with my sister Saturday night while we go out to a wedding.  It’s getting admittedly easier to leave her behind from time to time.  But not for too long…
• Summer is good, and too short.

Fun Link:

• Holophonic Haircut (Headphones Required!)

Today is going to be a rough day, though you don’t know it yet.

For the last few months you’ve been pretty spoiled.  In order to have you sleep soundly, you’ve been sleeping with us most of the night.  This is the case because when you wake up alone, you have a tendancy to cry, wail and scream until you’re blue in the face.

We hate to hear this, as we hate it when you are upset in any way.  It tears away at us and makes us want to run and pick you up and hug you until you shut up calm down.  Personally, I also like waking up and seeing that you are there, breathing and happy.

However…It’s getting to be time that you sleep in your own bed.  If we don’t start this now, by the time you are out of your crib, you will just get up, walk to our room and demand that we let you into bed with us.  If we refuse at that point, you may start gathering weapons to convince us with.

This is behavior that just won’t do I’m afraid.  So, on the advice of our pediatrician, we are going to start the hellish process of letting you cry it out.  But please remember, we love you.  You are a persistent little lady, so I’m sure you won’t give up easily.  I fully expect 2+ hours of wailing before you put yourself to sleep.  Your mom may have to leave the house for this, and I don’t really blame her.

I seem to be able to shut off the reaction to run and hug you a little bit easier.  While your mom rocks back and forth on the bed, I am able to watch tv.  Perhaps it’s something to do with my growing up in a big family, I had to learn how to shut things out.  But it certainly won’t be easy, so please go easy on me.

So, please do enjoy the day, and tire yourself out so we can make this process easier on all of us.

It’s going to be a long weekend.

Love, Dad

Today you are 66% of 1 year old.

In that time you’ve gone from a little immobile lump of cute, capable of not much more than laying around eating an pooping to a fast moving, clawed, sharp toothed, babbling whirlwind of cute.

You exhaust your mom and I, and we may get grumpy about it from time to time, but we love it, and wouldn’t want it any other way. (Except we might have you sleep in your own bed, but I admit I do like waking up and seeing you there, snoring away…)

You’ve got so far to go little lady, and so much to see. I envy you that, and hope you will take us along for the ride from time to time. You’re moving faster than we ever could have imagined.

If you look back here one day, and read these entries about you, I hope you look back fondly, and know that you are the most important thing in our lives.

If you are a teenager reading this…Take my advice and just try to remember that yes, the teenage years are crazy, hectic, emotional, painful and wonderful all at the same time. Enjoy it, for all the ups and downs.

If you are older, reading this as a young adult entering the working world: be smart, work hard and find better ways to do things. Just because the person before you did something in a particular way, doesn’t mean it always has to stay that way. People appreciate initiative and smarter ways of doing things. It will take you far.

If you are reading this while your own child sleeps a few feet away…I envy you. It’s the greatest feeling in the world. Hold him/her tight, cuddle, kiss and enjoy your baby.  Next thing you know, 66% of their first year will have passed, and you will be wondering where the time went too, and you’ll be in awe thinking about how old 8 months really is.

This morning, as I was walking down the stairs I somehow missed a step and fell hard…but the scary part was that I was holding Lily at the time.

That certainly adds a whole new terrifying element to the already frightening experience of falling down the stairs.

Like a lot of moments like this, everything moves in slow motion. But unlike usual there was a new dynamic. I had no conscious thought about breaking my fall, pain, or any other such trivial thing. The entire conscious portion of my mind was focused on Lily. Poor little lily falling to the floor with me. Everything was focused on making sure she was ok. Instead of reaching out to break my fall, I was reaching out to break hers. Instead of focusing on my pain, I was focused on saving her from any pain. In fact, I don’t think I felt anything at all until after handing lily to Laura’s safe hands.

Poor Laura…What a way to wake up. I admit, I screamed. A true scream of fear, calling out to Laura. I thought Lily had hit her head on a wooden edge that runs the length of the stairs. I called out because I needed Lily to have as much help as possible. Not because I was down.

As it turns out, Lily was frightened, but seems no worse for wear. Apparently the instinctual overrides in my psyche did their job and protected Lily quite well. After only a couple minutes of crying she was back to her normal routine of chewing on anything she can find and smiling at the world.

Me, I’ll be aching for a few days I’m sure…But that’s still hardly my concern. I just keep looking at Lily and thanking the universe that she’s ok.

This being a parent thing…what a rush…a wonderful, terrifying, amazing rush.

P.S.
Thanks mom and dad…for catching me when I fell….I’m starting to understand you guys more and more as time goes on.