Greetings from sunny Chattanooga, Teneessee! The last time I was in this state, Jim, his Cherokee Territory wife (Christina), and me were ascending its highpoint, Clingmans Dome, along a snow-strewn access road under a bright midnight moon. Following this summit, Jim got really, really sick from gas station Cheetos and we hunkered down at a truck stop just outside of Pigeon Forge (home to Dollywood and all things super classy) and I had the pleasure of using a truck stop pay-by-the-hour shower stall. Over vending machine peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while Jim might have been dying in the back of the van, Christina and I spent the evening watching Top Gun on a ridiculously huge television in the trucker rumpus room. The year was 1998 and it was the first time I saw that movie. I was a deprived child.

Speaking of deprived children, Hazel should not be counted among their swarthy lot. She spent Saturday Running Errands With Daddy and had a hoot, as did I. We went to the post office and the grocery store and still had enough time (and baby energy) left over for a quick trip to buy Mommy a brand new Red Sox hat. Hazel bought it with her allowance, which I bestowed upon her as we waited in line at the register and summarily suspended before we had crossed the parking lot to our car. While Hazel is very sensitive to the fact of our taking away tangible things (toys she insists on banging against each other, our cell phones she likes to chew upon, nigh swallowed cat food) intangibles like the concept of allowance can be turned on and off like a faucet without any tantrumic repercussions. Until she figures out that money is special paper, things should be just fine.

After Hazel was put to bed and the rain delay was lifted, Megan and I settled in for a nice night of televised Major League baseball. I am no august sports fan by far, but seeing as how I own a Red Sox hat, and had bought a second one for my wife (Hazel somehow has the king’s share of Red Sox paraphernalia in our house with two hats and one outgrown onesie), I make the effort to watch a game when it is on a channel our rabbit ears antenna picks up (ABC, PBS, or FOX - CBS should the atmosphere by particularly benevolent). Saturday’s game was pretty tense; both the Sox and their dread rivals the Yankees played excellently in the field and kept the score low and close. After a second rain delay, we arrived at the top of the 9th with 2 outs, Papelbon on the mound. Just as he was to throw what could have been a game ending strike, FOX cut the feed and switched to stupid NASCAR. With a pox cast on Bill France, Sr., I shook my fist angrily toward the heavens before realizing that I could just check the live feed of the game online. Technology fixes everything.

Since watching car racing on television is tantamount to torture in our house, we turned the channel to PBS out of desperation and the Saturday evening movie was just starting: Penny Serenade starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. The entire movie is couched as a series of tedious flashbacks sparked by different songs being played on the phonograph in deliberate succession by Dunne’s character. I can’t remember her name, as another character’s fictional moniker far outshone her, that of the “aw shucks” best friend of Grant, Applejack Carney. I’m not officially calling dibs on that name should we have a boy next, but consider this a penciled in dibs. Beyond his name, Applejack is a fantastic guy, capable of fixing printing presses with his fist (à la the Fonz), bathtubs using no tools, and marriages with adopted babies. All in all, the movie features loads of chauvinism, a miscarriage, purchased Japanese children, and that great clomping around sound effect made famous by the Three Stooges. You can watch Penny Serenade in its entirety online — consider it for your next rainy day distraction or betting device.

Anyway, by the length of this post, can you tell that I’ve been cooped up on three separate plane flights today? I’m off to see what Chattanooga has in store for a simple Mainer. If I make it to Rock City or a Lookouts game, I’ll let you know.

In between Hazel’s naps, Megan and I have spent this holiday weekend redecorating our living room. One drawback of having your first child a few days after moving into a new house is you don’t really have the time to hang artwork or any such fluff. So, our house has been pretty sparse for the past nine months and we decided to do something about it, consarnit! We’re not done yet—after buying paint yesterday at The Home Depot, our color choice has been called back to the stand for further questioning—but we both have been making things to frame and display.

I deliberately asked Megan is she had any touchstones or points of guidance before I made my contribution. She kindly and firmly said no again and again, thereby giving me full reign of my two 4"x6" allotments of creativity. After a few regrettable attempts, I finally penciled the following:

I started with drawing my canvas size and then just kept trying out ideas until something clicked. The rampaging monster went through several versions before I settled on what looks like a radio-controlled, cyclopean Mega Man knock-off. While the framed piece will be inked by my own hand, I think I am going to use this rough sketch as training fodder for my continued efforts to rise above the level of a handless drunk with my Wacom tablet. Pretty soon, I’ll be all current with even more outdated technology.

The trouble (and I use the word as loosely as one can while holding onto common decency) with having multiple interests is that when one saunters to the forefront of your mental efforts, your other hobbies wind up neglected and have to amuse themselves for a while. So, as I’ve been noodling more with pencils than words presently, my loves of prose, poetry, and the jaw harp were on hold for much of the past week. Luckily, I spend 15 minutes each morning sitting in the lotus position and visualizing a card table, two bowls of honey roasted peanuts, a mini-fridge stocked with various Polar brand sodas, a Pinochle deck, and a few folding chairs with padded seats. Should I overlook this daily practice, those ignored interests might get bored and/or destructive. I also keep a mental Prohibition in state because once that jaw harp hobby gets into the sauce, watch out!

Despite the fact that being a dad is great, I need some time off now and again. This reprieve comes via two specific events: Being At Work and Hazel’s Bed Time. Megan, on the other hand, doesn’t get to leave the house for 50 regular hours every week, so it’s important that she get some non-parent time when I am available. Being that I had a three-day weekend on my hands, we found time for her to go shopping alone, take a nap, and even go to a movie with another AWOL mother or two.

The latter activity didn’t start until seven at night, which coincides with Hazel’s regular bed time. So, after her bath and bottle had soothed her to tiny slumbering snores, I had a whole evening to myself. In between watching the Packers break my cheese-encrusted heart in subzero conditions, I finished up my theme redesign. A few surface level tweaks need to get done, but things should be ready to roll for one and all (i.e. Jim). So click around and let me know what you think.

Features I am most proud of:

• Megan took my muddled explanations and half-crumpled napkin sketches for a Pitfall! homage banner image and really nailed it in vector graphic glory.
• Just in case you don’t want to see my posting calendar or blogroll, you can just fold it up via those little double arrows to the right of each sidebar section. This may be fairly useless, but it’s still dern cool.
• Speaking of my posting calendar, I have gone back to using the AJAX Calendar plugin and really like the fact that folks can cruise through many months of archives with the main page not reloading until they choose a certain day. Plus, the downward pointing arrow centered beneath the calendar, when clicked, will show a small list of every post title in the current month. It takes a little Fonzarelli finagling of the mouse click to get the function to work sometimes, but I am still as proud of it as a mother duck is of that one duckling that only paddles in circles. Sometimes circles are the way to get where you need to be.

Hazel’s latest photo session, commemorating her eighth month of life on the outside, did not go over swimmingly. Lately, she has started whining a bit should we take away something she wants; in this case, she really wanted to chew on Megan’s digital SLR and that mean mommy simply wouldn’t give in. Instead, Megan gave our little technophile her cell phone to gaze upon in wonder. And as the warm, glowing, warming glow of the phone’s backlit screen soothed the savage tot, Megan started snapping pics once more.

Of course, you cannot expect a baby with such a treat to just stare at it and simply noodle some buttons. At least, not for long. What started as mere nibbling soon ballooned to outright gnawing. Despite having enough teething rings to hold the toothiest crocodile at bay, Hazel decided at that moment to cut her choppers on Megan’s Nokia. The improvement in her mood could not be resisted and Megan just kept taking pictures. All in all, the photo shoot was rescued from a threatening tantrum and we can have a smiling baby in the Month Eight space of our First Year frame. Oh, and no teeth came out, even after several minutes of mobile munching.

After work, I called Megan to see if she needed me to stop and pick up anything on my way home. Her phone went right to voicemail. Thinking that odd, I called the house phone (which is actually Megan’s office number so I never use it lest I fall into the company of supply houses and sales reps). Megan answers and explains that her phone has stopped working. She recounts for me the tale I just told you – albeit much more succinctly and linearly – and tells me that she’ll be getting a new cell phone the following day. Luckily, that day came and her phone had “dried out” enough to function again to an acceptable degree. No new Moto for Meggo.

Should I ever land my dream job in international espionage, I’ll eschew the fancy technology for a good, old-fashioned baby. Need that microfilm destroyed? Just give it to your government issued baby and it will be a drooly memory in no time. Still need to dispose of those stolen top secret blueprints to the latest Doomsday Machine and enemy agents are hot on your trail? Just hand them over to your diapered sidekick and not even Mike Wazowski will be able to reassemble the torn-up mishmash. Mark my words, in the next James Bond flick, 007 will be sporting a BabyBjörn carrier and crashing Lamborghinis through plate glass windows all in search of a restroom that has a diaper changing station.

-or- Sonnet #553 DISK FULL ERROR

Some ISP trouble notwithstanding,
my new weblog theme is nearly complete.
Server-side errors impeded landing
the PHP files needed for this feat.

I can tweak and continue debuggin’
and upload all the recoded data.
Thanks to the awesome Preview Theme plugin,
no one need suffer a faulty beta.

A clean, fresh look is my ultimate aim
since my prose is the ultimate focus.
Once I am done, a few files overlain,
I’ll have a whole new blog – hocus pocus!

I like my new banner image the most.
Pray Activision won’t sue your fine host.

You’re going to notice some changes here at FHTP over the next few weeks. I have been working offline on a new theme as this one is getting a bit stagnant for me. Things will look much the same, but the backend of things will be a whole lot sweeter. I wasted about three nights worth of time trying to get WampServer 2 up and running on my laptop. The idea is that I’d be able to make all my changes locally and then relaunch my blog without any public hiccups. While convenient in theory, Wamp gave me way too much trouble to spend any more time on it. It needed to be restarted often (along with my whole system), so is just not worth the slow burning frustration.

In other news, Maine is having one of its snowiest winters in a long time. In fact, our December snowfall totals almost broke all-time records from Portland up to Presque Isle. Rockland itself got about four feet worth of snow last month and since the New Year, we’ve been whacked with two more accumulating snow storms. My driveway is slowly shrinking with each snow clearing much like the way a NYC studio apartment gets tinier with each new tenant and subsequent fresh coat of off-white paint.

In fact, the driveway has gotten so tight that I got stuck yesterday morning at the very end, a mere three feet from the cleanly plowed street. I was just a half foot too far to the left and got stuck in a snowbank. After the first few spins of my useless front wheels, I found myself trapped deep within nigh insurmountable ice ruts. After trying pushing, pulling, cardboard under the tires, kitty litter, sand, and ice melt pellets, I finally broke down and called for a tow truck. It was fairly embarrassing, but it could have been worse (if I were wearing a tutu at the time).

So as changes start happening here, let me know what you think by comment or email.