Confusable

So it's that time. They announced the winners of the "Team Champion of the month." Therefore, I've been preparing to put them in the next newsletter. I received the pictures today, and I must say that July's winner for the heart of the house has a somewhat inappropriate picture. Before I go on, I should mention that her nomination and winning were confusing to everyone, as they announced her name as "Maria... I can't pronounce the last name..." Which led over half of our housekeeping staff to believe that they had indeed won the award. Amongst the hysteria they were able to identify which Maria was the best Maria. The "really short" one. Half of the girls already excited jumped about ecstatically while the others sat down. (It should be noted that this entire episode has been completely fictional, and that I concocted it based around the idea of how funny it was that a "Maria" of many Marias had won the team champion award. However, it does not take away from the fact that her picture is inappropriate.) Maria Campos, the winner of the award is incredibly small. So much so that they had to enter her nomination on an index card as opposed to the normal 8.5"x 11" form.

In her picture, which is taken by a human resources employee hiding in a niche in the hallway to the cafeteria, who springs out on the day that you've dressed your worst, and have had the least amount of time to put into doing your hair, who snaps your picture and runs... we see that she has not only been caught on a bad day, but apparently on a day she wasn't even working. She is completely out of uniform, and not necessarily "appropriately" dressed for a company picture. The second reason the photo is inappropriate actually serves a purpose for our humble blog. It demonstrates just HOW small she is. Here is her picture with her faithful cat, Esmerelda, as you can see below.

10 hours of bliss.

Well, this has been an interesting week. I worked Monday thru Saturday last week. 60 hour weeks stink, and even more confusing, I had to work Monday of this week, so I had Sunday and Tuesday off. This has completely thrown me for a loop, as it has felt like Monday three days this week.

On the good side, my boss Peter has been in, so it's not all on my head all the time. Another bonus is that several of my favourite guests are in house, thus enabling me to use their names without working at it and making me seem more like the concierge/hotel manager guy from "Pretty Woman". (Who is my current hero. The dude is so smooth, it's not even funny.)

I've been working on my class lately. Trying more and more to be elegant. Refined. Upscale. I know that I work for a hotel that wants to be the same things and I want to be a good representation of that. Sarah an determining now whether it is possible, and whether we are willing to move into a rented house, as opposed to our apartment. We currently have a very nice deal where we are, but it is feeling awful small, especially when someone comes to visit, so we are looking.

Kiah has been really developing alot lately, and has started laughing.

Well, I need to get back to work. My break is over. Peace.

Toys.

Now most of you may not know this, but the average church nursery, or any nursery mind you (with the exception of plant nurseries...) is a life and death struggle between the babies inhabiting said nursery. A gladiator pit of sorts, the babies do what they can to kill eachother.

Watch a group of infants and toddlers in the pit (as we will be calling it) for any amount of time, and you will see attempts to shove others into sharp objects, the throwing of blocks, and most prominently, the gouging of eyes. This is especially popular in the toddler set. Place them near an infant, and watch their fingers go straight for the eyes.

In it's infinite wisdom, our generation has taken away the only true defense that children have had up until this point. That's right. Toys.

When I was little, I was given a set of weapons with which to defend myself. Hard plastic. Sharp edges. Pointy noses on dolls... All for my own safety. To protect me from the three year old with the metal jack in the box that at a whopping 9 ounces made a decent bludgeoning weapon.

But not today. Today, all the toys are soft and mushy. Rubber coated. Wimpy. They can't take an eye out! They can't gouge! The only legitimate violent use for most of these toys is suffocation, and that takes time! Before you know it the pit lord, er, nursery attendant is going to see you, and stop you. Because, no matter how dangerous your toy, you probably can't stop her.

Well. My parents, being the loving grandparents that they are, sent us a box with some of my old clothes and toys. Among which, was my weapon of choice... namely, the "Fisher Price Deathmonger Babybasher 5000."


Ha ha. My son is going to RULE!!!

Yes. This monster of a rattle sports hard plastic petals, and a terrifying google-y eyed face to strike fear in the heart of your oponent and a bright red throttling ball at the base which is just the right size to fit down a baby's throat or eye socket. Coincidence? I think not. Here is the Deathmonger Babybasher 5000 pictured below with Kiah, so that you can see its approximate size. This thing is the biggest rattle possible. A weaker baby wouldn't even be able to lift it. This is like those celtic broadswords of Ireland and Scotland that terrified enemy armies. This is epic. It even has a mirror mounted on the back with which to mock your enemies with their pitiful appearance after you've made them pee themselves. If they hadn't already... but that's beside the point.


So if you've seen a nursery lately, and wondered about Kiah's safety... fear not. The boy is well equipped, and prepared to be the terror of the pit! Hmmm. We'll need a gladiator name for him. Perhaps "Helmet."

Mawwaige... Mawwaige is what bwings us togevva today...

So our good friends Daniel and Lara got married today...
I'll post pictures soon.

But that got me thinking about my friend Kristen from Starbucks back in Illinois, and how she got married to this nice bloke named Roy a ways back, so I looked up her myspace and found this picture which is just beautiful, and I needed to post it.

Love ya Kristen! Glad to see you found your rainbow connection.

So things were bad there for a couple minutes...

I got home from work the other day, to find this...

Needless to say, I was bothered. The computer would begin startup, but stalled on the "Starting OSX" screen. (Which, by the way, is one of the silliest screens in the operating system, as it now just a hoax. In the past, when macs were starting up, they would give you a progress bar of your start up. Well, now they've improved the speed of startup so dramatically, that the progress bar is unneeded. However, people would apparently freak without it, or feel that their computer was taking too long to start up, or something... so Apple kept the progress bar at startup, but get this, IT'S JUST AN ANIMATED GIF! Nothing more. It just makes you think that it's kicking butt. That's all.) Anyway, it froze at that screen.

I couldn't boot in safe mode, but I was able to boot from the install disc (By holding down on the C key with the install cd in the drive, for the mac users out there) and run disk utility. No luck. It let me know that there was an error on my hard drive, but couldn't fix it. Well, I remembered that a long time ago, I heard about a way to repair your hd even if you didn't have the install disk, but I couldn't remember the name of the mode that you had to boot into, or the way to do it. So I humbled myself, and did some research online. Unfortunately, I had to do the research at work. On a PC of all things. It was so humiliating. It looked something like this.

Well, the mode is called "Single user mode" and you get there by holding the command and s keys while booting. It comes up with a black screen white type that looks a little like dos, but it's just the unix underpinnings of OSX. Anyway, I ran a script that looked like: /sbin/fsck -fy.

It came up with some "errors" and I ran a script to correct them, and it came back clean!

It wouldn't work right away, so archived and installed the OS, and it booted back like a charm! I was so happy. It's really disconcerting when I think about how much music, how many photos and other things I have that are not backed up. But everything worked out, and it's as good as new again.

Woot.

Well then...

Ok, so the family was out here for the larger part of last week and into this week. Sarah's grandma Marge, her parents Jeff & Linda, and her sisters Kaitlin and Jessica. Here are some pictures from Glen Eyrie, the castle outside of town.







It's just been a very busy past few weeks. Thanks to everyone for your patience, and for even coming back to check the site. We'll get things going again, now that they've quieted down.

Kiah is smiling alot now, and mimicking our voices. He's 14 lbs. now... The nurse giving him his vacines the other day couldn't hold his little legs down without help. I'm so proud.

We had Kiah dedicated to the Lord at church last Sunday. Dedications are a vow to raise him in a way that's pleasing to God. I was dedicated in Sarasota, Florida at a little church called Grace Fellowship, and Sarah was dedicated at Moraine Valley Church in Palos Heights, IL. We've been waiting till Sarah's family was out before we had it done.

This next week, I am not at the front desk, but back in the Reservations department. It will be alot of fun, and hopefully a great learning experience. Yesterday, I was in there for 8 hours, and it was well spent.

Sarah's back to tutoring and Halie has been playing alot of catch up on work that's been missed due to the olympics.

My good friend Jim V. (the guy that always keeps me in check here on the blog) and his wife Paula have been going through some terrible medical struggles over the last few months. Please join Sarah and I in praying for a swift and complete recovery for Paula, and peace for Jim as he holds her hand through this season.

Kiah's gettin big.

13 pounds, 6 ounces... 7 weeks old. Kid's a monster.

Don Rickles

Ryan commented on my myspace that Kiah looked like Don Rickles, which inspired this comparrison.



And at nearly two months old, we have determined that Sigur Ròs is Kiah's favorite band, because he can sing along, and he knows all the words...

Garden of the Gods... and Kaitlin

Sarah's sister Kaitlin has been visiting us this past week or so. She'll be here for another couple weeks, which is cool... we're stoked to have family around.

Things have been good. Busy, but good. Work has been fun, and a good learning experience. I will be moving partially to reservations for the next few weeks, but I'll still keep my momentum at the front desk.

I'm staying home today because Kiah didn't sleep much last night and Sarah was beat this morninng. I didn't get July 4th off, but I got the PTO day, so I took it today. I took a few pics out of our buiding collection to share with you, so here we are...
Here's Kiah and me. We look like some goofy sort of gang.


Here's Sarah and Kaitlin at the Garden of the Gods. Kiah's in the stroller, and the mexican lady posing in the background has such a happy look on her face, I didn't want to crop her out...


Here's a pic of Kait, Kiah and I. We're so happy from a distance, but zoom in and...


Here's a pic of Kiah and I at the visitors center. I like the way it turned out.



And finally, here's a pic of Kait and Kiah. They're so cute!

My brain is hanging upside down...

Last week, Cheney and Rumsfeld go into the oval office to brief the president on the day's affairs. Upon entering, and after the normal niceties, Bush turns to Rumsfeld and asks "So what happened yesterday in Iraq?"

"Well Mr. President" Rumsfeld says while looking down at his feet "Three Brazilian officers were killed in heavy combat yesterday."

The president clutches his heart. Reels for a second and then plops into his chair, obviously shaken with the news and says "Oh my God Donald... Just how many is a Brazillion?"

So it's been awhile.

Even as I write this, I do so with one hand. I'm currently feeding the son his "brazillionth" bottle today. He's a pooping, eating, pooping machine. With a side of sleep.

I have been wanting to write more, and I keep trying, I just have so much on my plate right now. But I promise to find the time in this next week. It's amazing how fast time flies. Kiah is a month old today! How crazy is that? In his four short weeks of life, he has been to my hotel twice, church three times, a shower, the mall, a bunch of stores, and the highest suspension bridge in the world! He's gonna be so cool, we won't know what to do with him. He fell asleep during the Cubs beating today. Too bad they can only lose once today, otherwise, we'd appreciate the other nap.

Sarah's been sleeping for awhile. She's needed the rest so badly, and when I can be home, I want to make sure I relieve her of her baby duties. It's nice that he's partially bottle-fed, which means that I can wake up with him at night, and babysit for extended periods. I did two nights ago, and Sarah went for a haircut. It's adorable. Real short. I'll post some pics of her soon.

Oh! Kaitlin, Sarah's youngest sister, is coming out on Wednesday to stay for a couple weeks! We're real excited about it, and are looking forward to Kiah spending some quality time with his aunt. There's still no word on when anyone from my family will be able to come, but Sarah's parents and sister Jessica will be coming out to pick Kait up and drive back home. Its so nice to have family around.

In other family news, my sister Tammy had her baby, Eowyn Jeane. She's pretty cute, for a girl... just kidding, she's adorable. Kid has a ton of dark hair... My mom went out to be with her for a week or so, and my brothers are going to stay with her while my parents go to Africa for a few weeks. They are specing out the city in Tanzania they are going to, and will get to see Tammy, Josh and the baby before they head out. Wish we could go, but it's not to be. At least not now.

Well, I gotta go. Looks like he's going to sleep, and I don't want to wake him.

Peace

Olympic baby sitter

Here's a pic from today of Sarah's Olympic student, Halie Kim. It'll be neat for him to see that he was held by an Olympic speed skater when he was little... pretty cool.

Tired but happy...

Well I've been wiped lately. The schedule is nice, but I am at work ALL THE TIME. It's hard to get up and leave the baby and my baby every morning, but I am so happy to have a job that's paying off, I know it's the right thing.

In more pressing news, my sister Tammy had her baby yesterday morning. Her name is Eowyn Jeanne. I think I spelled that right. She was only 7 pounds 11 ounces, but she was 20.75" long. Pretty nice sized baby. I'm sure she's adorable, but we haven't been able to see her yet. If you read Tammy's blog, or know her... be sure to send congratulations. Her husbands name is Josh.

The family is pretty excited. My mom is headed out to NY to be with them during the first few weeks, much like Sarah's mom has done with us.

Oh! In other news, I was awarded "Team champion of the month" for May. It's basically "Employee of the month", but has a different name. It's still an honor, and can't hurt my reputation. I've been doing much better with the employees under me lately. I try not to think of them as "under"... I know that came out wrong. But in this case, you really have to assert yourself, or they'll run all over you. I had to confront someone the other day for the way she spoke to me. I did it privately of course, but since then, she's been friendlier and much more comfortable in our relationship. I just needed to tell her where I stood, and that was that.

I've really put my nose to the grindstone, especially in the area of valet/bellmen. I care about them, and I want to make things better. Now I'm in the position to do just that. We have a department meeting for them on Friday, and I'll lay out our new gameplan that I've developed then.

Pardon the dullness of my writing if it has been. I feel as though my artistic, interesting side has really been under strain lately. Probably due to lack of sleep. I will close with this adorable pic of our son. In true colors.

Double up

Sarah posted these pictures to her site, so you're not seeing anything new... Unless you haven't checked hers... But I wanted them here on this site for memories-sake.

Enjoy.








By the way... Kiah latched on yesterday, and really started breastfeeding. It's about time. I joked in the hospital that we're going to have to get him a little shirt that says "I suck at sucking." Now that he's gotten the hang of eating this way, it'll be alot less work for Sarah, and he won't have to wait for the bottle to warm up. It's a win-win.

Work is going great, but the long days are kind of getting to me this week.

Thanks to all the people who have called, or sent cards/flowers, or cooked meals. We're really thankful for the care you've shown us.

Life with a baby.

Well, I haven't really had a chance to write much this week. I hope the pictures have sufficed to a degree. I will continue to post those... so you shouldn't have to worry about a complete lack of content from the Jim camp.

Hezekiah has been incredible. He is such a good baby. At this point, he really doesn't know what to do if he's awake other than eat, so he can be frustrated, and root around for food even if he isn't hungry. But this morning, he seemed to get that he can just lay there and look around. And that's what he did. It was great. He's been laying and looking for like an hour now. He has such big beautiful eyes. He's very lively, and very strong. He flipped himself over at 4 days old, which is almost unheard of, and he can do it whenever, so it wasn't just a fluke. The good thing is that I got it on video, so I can prove it. I've burned cds with pics and videos for our parents. I'd like to do more, but I ran out of cds. Things always go that way. I want to manipulate the video files into smaller sizes so I can send them via email, but we don't have the upgraded version of quicktime, which would be the best way to do that. So if you want videos, and want to buy the baby a present... just kidding. We'll get the upgrade as soon as we can, and then it will be video heaven.

Work went well this week. I haven't gotten any flack, with the exception of a few front desk agents that feel for some reason that I should inherently know how the front desk software works before I'm a manager in their department. They apparently missed the "Trainee" memo. And even if I wasn't, often times, you are called to manage the people who do a job, without knowing how to do it yourself yet. That's why you learn. Everyone else has been awesome. I got to go to a couple meetings this week, and that was incredible. Such a fun group of people. Javier, my favorite manager, was in a meeting with me, and the subject of conversation among the other managers was mice. Night audit said that they saw something little and brown running from the restaurant to the Summit ballroom. Javier looked up with a guilty look and said "Was it me?" I love these people.

Sarah's healing steadily, and apparently winning the breastfeeding battle. Everyone's emails and myspace comments have really been encouraging her, so thank you. She's droppin weight pretty quickly, despite the fact that Kiah hasn't been breastfeeding from the get-go.

Oh, music. I really gave alot of thought to what Kiah should hear first. What kind of music would be best? Should it be something that matters to Sarah and I? Should it be something slow or fast? Well, I decided that something timeless and high quality. So I decided on Beethoven. I know, it seems so blasé. Tons of people listen to Beethoven, especially with a baby, because "It makes their brains develop faster..." blah blah blah. But I really felt that if one is going to be introduced to music, it should be a moment of unique beauty. One that encapsulates why music matters so much. Why it is what it is. All hard and soft music alike relies on music's amazing ability to stir the soul. And Ludwig Van stirs the soul. In every piece of music he touched... nearly deaf... he felt the essence of music so personally that he can reach into my soul every single time. I decided that the first piece of music by Beethoven that touched me, the moonlight sonata, would be an appropriate place to start. Something subtle, something beautiful... something perfect. I sat in the rocking chair I bought Sarah for our upcoming 5th anniversary. (It's the wooden anniversary, and I couldn't think of a more suiting present for the wooden anniversary. I have to thank Sarah's mom for the idea...) Anyway. He was laying in my arms, and had been grunting around. When the music started, he just stopped moving, tilted his head back, and stared into space. Listening. It was perfect. I had his bottle, and started to feed him, but every now and then, he'd do the same move. Stop eating, lean back, and stare off. It was so touching. I know that many people wouldn't even give a second thought to what their child's first exposure to music was... but I am not those people, and I know the effect it has had on my entire life. My world view. My loves and hates... My being. And I desperately want my son to share that with me, as Sarah has.

Well, we're off to a baby shower today. I need to go, but I love you all and am so thankful for all your wonderful comments.

Peace and thank you.

More pictures of the baby