Erin, Will and I are all home safe and sound. All kinds of anxiety and worries of first time parents aside, everything is going pretty darned good. After the first night that I came home, I stayed at the hospital the last two. We lucked out, and managed to get upgraded to “The Victorian Room” which is a pretty posh way to spend a couple of days at the hospital. Those couple of people who came and visited us in the first room can attest to the massiveness of the upgrade. They’ve only got one Victorian Room, so we were quite fortunate that we got into it at all.

Anyway, as promised, here are some pictures:

Clicking on each of those pictures will open up a larger version in a new window.

Simpson’s quote of the day:
Homer: “Aw, it’s a boy — and what a boy!”
Dr. Hibbert: “Er, that’s the umbilical cord. It’s a girl.”

Well, as Arcanas so rightly pointed out, perhaps yesterday’s post was one of those pre-canned posts. Actually, I typed it up at around 5:00 yesterday morning, just before heading to the hospital. I’ve actually also delayed this post somewhat, so that the grandparents have time to get their phone calls out.

William Alexander Mitchell was born at 6:58 local time on February 17th, 2003. Our 7lb 2oz baby boy measured at 21 1/2 inches. There are all kinds of other details, and I’m sure I’ll fill them in over the coming days, but for now, you’ll have to be satisfied with that. I also didn’t have an opportunity to get a photo yet, but rest assured that both Mother and Baby are doing fine. I only made a handful of phone calls, since I didn’t get home until around 11:00, and I’m exhausted. I have to get some sleep before tomorrow morning, since Erin wants me at the hospital bright and early. It would have been nice to be able to stay overnight, but for various reasons, I didn’t think it would be a good idea. I placed exactly five phone calls, two to great-grandparents, and three to grandparents, then instructed them to spread the word. I will try to get pictures up as soon as possible, but I can’t promise when that will be.

I’d been saving that Frink quote from yesterday for the day that we had the baby, so bearing that in mind, I’m not going to have a quote of the day for today. In fact, it might be a couple of days before I get any kind of quote up at all.

Ah - what the heck, I can see you’re dissapointed, so I’ll give you a cop-out quote. “Arrrr, you’re truly the catch of the day.” - Captain McAllister (holding his newborn son by the feet)

Erin and I were in the grocery store yesterday, and happened to need some cooking spray. The large size can of Pam was on sale, so I thought we’d compare prices with the regular size cans of store brand spray. I asked Erin how much was in the other can, and she told me. I asked her to check again, since it was more than was in the large Pam can (by 30% or so.) She checked again, and sure enough, she was right the first time. The house brand cooking spray, which contains the same basic ingredients as the Pam cooking spray, has more than twice the amount of cooking spray than the Pam in the same sized can. This, despite being 25% less money.

The more money thing I understand, and it doesn’t bother me. If the brand name wasn’t more money usually, then something is wrong. The thing that bothers me is that the amount of spray in the cans is so out of whack. It’s like you can almost see where the people who make the product have no respect for their customers at all, hoping to sneak that one by them. I’ve got a message for the people who made that decision: “Hey - wake up - you just lost a sale, and any potential future sales, based on this slimy tactic. The toothpaste people smartened up and made the nozzle smaller again, so maybe you should smarten up too.”

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Well it’s just a prototype, with proper funding I’m confident this little baby could destroy an area the size of New York City.” - Professor Frink

I went out shopping for a Valentine’s gift for Erin today at lunch. Until a couple of days ago, we had planned on not exchanging gifts for Valentine’s day this year, since we didn’t know if we’d be in the hospital today, or what. Then I decided I’d get Erin a copy of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” which she really enjoyed in the theatre. I couldn’t find it at any stores around work. I mentioned that to her, and she suggested something else I should get her instead. Well, I looked, and the only ones available were between four and ten times more expensive than I think they should be, with the four times ones being utter crap, and the ten times ones being quite nice actually. End result, discuss with the wife before making purchase, since we can likely get the same item at a different store for half the price of the cheapest ones available downtown. How’s that for a run-on sentence.

I was going to get into the real origin of Valentine’s day, but then I thought nobody would believe me when I told them that it actually was a tribute to the mysterious inventor of the fork. Oh well.

Just so that you know, I’m thinking of “pre-preparing” a couple of entries for next week, and “post-dating” them, so they’ll automagically show up, without any intervention from me at all. End result - you won’t be able to tell if I’m still at work, or if we’ve had the baby until I actually make an announcement ;-)

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Oh doctor, I just visited a wonderful place of fire and brimstone with funny little men in red pyjamas poking pitchforks up my butt.” - Homer

People keep asking me if I’m still here. You’d think they were eager to get rid of me or something. :-)

I have a feeling that it will be this weekend. My prior prediction of yesterday was based on thinking the doctor would have Erin induced, which obviously didn’t occur. I don’t know exactly why, but I just get this feeling that the big show will be Saturday.

Work has been pretty busy for the past couple of weeks, with a bunch of different projects on the go. Some of them are going to be left at a bad time when I take two weeks off, but I don’t know that there is ever a good time to take a long period of time off - especially when you’re working on a whole bunch of projects at once. It’s good to be busy though.

I’ve heard that “Shanghai Knights” is both not as good as, and better than “Shanghai Noon” I will reserve judgement until I see it for myself, which could be a while…Erin doesn’t really care for the thought of sitting through a movie at the theatre lately, and once the baby is born, it could be a while before we go to another movie.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I just realized that the cat and the dog haven’t had a wedding, they’ve been living in sin!” - Marge

Erin hasn’t called me yet to tell me she’s in labour, so I have to assume that she’s not, which means that my guess will likely pass by with no baby to show for it. We do have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon though, so anything is still possible. It’s with a different doctor, since Erin’s doctor is away from his office for a few days.

Anyway, tonight we’re going to Mom and Dad’s place for supper. My aunt is in town for the day, so we’ll have a bit of a visit with her. She’ll be sorely disappointed, since she requested to see the baby while she’s here, and that’s just not going to be possible - the baby no having been born as of yet.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “Very well. I must hurry back to my comic book store, where I dispense the insults rather than absorb them.” - Comic Book Guy

Apparently two more people have now fallen out of the baby pool. Well, technically that’s not true, since if Erin has the baby today, there’s still a tie break. Still, she hasn’t called me to get me to come home yet, so I think the likelihood of a February 11th baby is slim.

I’ve been playing “Lingo” on the Gameshow Network’s web page a fair amount lately. It’s fun, but can be quite tough. Some people are obviously better at it than others though - I’ve played against people who nearly shut me out, and people who are about the same skill level as I am. I’ve also played against people who aren’t nearly as good as me, but they tend to quit when they realize they are getting shellacked. I can’t really blame them, since when you’re getting beaten badly in that game, it’s so frustrating that you might as well not be playing it at all. The computer is far too easy to beat, but it does kind of give you a peek ahead at some of the words that are on the list. Sorry Mom, it doesn’t have Chuck, but it does have all the cool sound effects (YMMV) from the show.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “I hope you enjoyed my one-man pie fight, kids!” - Krusty