And the morning light was breaking / Slowly moving across the bed

So...

I've been a dad-to-be for about 9 weeks now. I've seen our first ultrasound.

Erin is beginning to show, her appetite is steadily growing in breadth and quanitity, and one topic has begun to regularly resurface in conversation: baby names.

Of course, at this point it's not yet possible to tell the gender of our child (bones are just now beginning to form according thebump.com), so we've been considering both boy's names, girl's names, and some gender neutral fare. Every trip to Barnes & Noble or Borders is incomplete without swinging by the parenting section to look at baby name books.

It's a bit of a tough matter though, since Erin and I want our child's name to be meaningful one and not too common. It's easier to rule out names than it is to zero in on our favorites, so here's a list of names we will most likely not be naming our child (in no particular order):

• Super Street Fighter IV
• Fender Telecaster
• Hybrid
• Samus Aran
• Princess Peach
• Awesome
• Mario Kart
• Stuart Murdoch (Erin just doesn't like the name Stuart)
• Boss Reverb
• Alien Ressurection
• Spot 2
• Crow (the superhero or the robot)
• Shigeru Miyamoto

Link and Zelda have not yet been eliminated from the list.

Good morning starshine / The earth says hello / You twinkle above us / We twinkle below

I won't soon forget July of 2009. It feels like I aged more in a month than I had in the past few years. To be completely honest, I'm not really sure how to start this blog. How about a few words about my surroundings at this point in time?

• It's a lovely Saturday afternoon here in Irvine, CA. The common just outside Erin's and my block of student housing is basking in a warm, welcoming sun. While Augusts in Southern California can be scorchingly intolerable, there's no sign of that today.
• My copy of Belle and Sebastian's "The Life Pursuit" is skipping in the CD player. Drat. It's either been subject one too many plays or it's time for me to invest in a new CD player. Then again, maybe it's time to skip the CD player altogether, go 100% digital, and set up a music-streaming system. Hmmm, decisions, decisions...
  
• Every chair I own is currently resting upside-down on another piece of furniture. Spot has come down with a horribly bad case of fleas, so the exterminators came into the apartment yesterday to treat our carpet. I'm actually standing at my kitchen counter typing this since our home office is currently unavailable for use.
• I seem to be missing every tenth letter or so as I type. The weariness and stress of recent times started catching up to me about two weeks ago, and now I think that said weariness is finally making its way to my hands. I wonder if the San Miguel beer at 2:30 in the afternoon has something to do with it.
  

Okay, enough piddly, little details...

I've established this blog for a two reasons, the most immediate being that I want to document as much of the past month as I can before the details fade from memory. The first few entries will be for those of you who are interested in learning more about what Erin and I had gone through since the 7th of July. I've received a goodly amount of emails and Facebook messages/comments asking for details. I figure a blog entry (or two) is as good a way as any to get those details to interested parties.

My more over-arching reason for starting this blog is to keep a better account of my days. I actually maintained a blog on MySpace for a little while, but stopped updating it a few years ago when MySpace became to cumbersome to keep up. Downs and ups and all things considered, I can say that I enjoy my life very, very, VERY much. The days have been good to me for the most part, and I know that someday - when faces and events begin to slip from memory - I'll appreciate having something to remind me of a life lovingly lived.