Surprise! After DJing in Liverpool last night and getting to bed at 6am, I got a phone call from Sharon at 9.15. Just as I was about to gently remind her that I'd had just 3 hours sleep and could she phone back later, she told me that the Doctor had said she could come home if she wished. So I dragged myself out of bed, drank a strong cup of high caffeine coffee and collected her from the hospital. As you can imagine she was over the moon to be coming out 2 days earlier than she had expected. I was happy for her too, but just a little too tired to show it much. She's staying at her Mum's tonight because I'm working again although this time its a local wedding so I'll be home by 1.30am and should get a decent nights kip.
I did manage to grab another hour this afternoon but it seems to have left me feeling worse rather than better. Oh well, lots of coffee and Red Bull should see me through the evening.
Currently suffering from.... Exhaustion and acid indigestion, and that's just me. Sharon's recovery is going OK but a little slower than the nurses would like. I understand that, because this was her third caesarean, the surgeons had to "mess her around a little" when putting her back together. Consequently it looks unlikely that she will be back home before Tuesday. In a way this is a blessing because I am working Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and wouldn't have been around to look after her. An additional side effect is that she is quite a lot of discomfort at the moment. I feel so useless standing by her bedside watching her in pain and knowing that there is absolutely nothing I can do to relieve it for her.
Connor on the other hand is doing fine. I know all parents think this, but I really do think he is a good looking baby.
Thank you to everyone for your messages of support and congratulations.
I'm off to bed. More soon.....
Wow...... What else can I say but "Wow!". I'm a Daddy again, but this time he's gentically mine too. The day was just amazing. Seeing him lifted from the caesarean and hearing him wail for the first time filled my heart to bursting. Its late and I'm knackered so I wouldn't do the experience justice by describing it now. However the picture below links to a gallery of photos taken today. Thank you to everyone who sent messages of good wishes, especially
Jax. I got your email when I got home tonight, thank you.
Here we go! In 10 minutes Sharon and I are off to the hospital. Next time I blog I'll be a Daddy again. Yey!
The tip of the Iceberg. Tipping is obviously a huge thing over in the States. I've come across 2 different points of view on this subject this week. First of all there's the point of view of the waiter or waitress, for whom the tip represents a significant proportion of their income.
Hootress is (as the name suggests) a Hooters waitress who gives a
gentle reminder on tipping etiquette. On the other hand,
PromoGuy feels tipping should be
reserved for good service and is aggrieved that not tipping
"will probably send the message that I am an a$$hole".
I have to say that, being a Brit, I can fully understand where both of them are coming from. The ideal solution would be for restaurants to pay the serving staff a reasonable wage in the first place and tipping to be customary as a reward for good service. That way everybody wins. The waiting staff can earn more by serving better, the restaurant gets better motivated staff and the customer knows in advance how much they are paying and can choose to reward staff if they feel it appropriate.
Of course, the chances of the restaurants actually paying staff decent rates is fairly minimal until such time as a significant proportion of customers make it clear that that is what they want.
Earn hard cash in your spare time! OK, so I've not got a job at the moment and we may be running out of cash shortly but, honestly, Sharon doesn't have to go
this far to earn our keep.
Watching: Bob the Builder for the 20th time this week because James insists.
Monday Mission 2.29 Courtesy of
PromoGuy.net. Yes, I know its late but I was a little busy yesterday.
- 1. Do you remember your first encounter with computers? Tell me about that. It would either have been my first 16k ZX Spectrum or the BBC Acorn that the school had. Programming in BASIC rocked!
- 2. How late can you stay up and still be functional the next day? Do you do that very often? As a DJ I am up until 3am at least once on most weekends. Last weekend I was up until 4am on Friday and 6am on Saturday. On occasions I will not get back until 10am and only get a few hours sleep. When I was clubbing I would usually go without any sleep at all on at least one night of the weekend. I have gone from Friday morning until Sunday evening without sleeping! I can still function the following day provided I get plenty of coffee.
- 3. When was the last really good hug you got from another adult? Who was it and what was the situation? Other than my wife? That would be at my wedding last November when I got hugged my more people than I can remember.
- 4. One thing about children is that they all like to draw. We all shared the same ability and skill level at one time. Do you still like to draw? (Not do you think you draw well, or do others, but do you like to?) If not, how come? Did you get discouraged at some point? I don't draw but I do doodle. I've never been artistic so I just gave up drawing. Doodling however helps relieve the boredom during meetings and telephone conversations.
- 5. I way overslept today. I had to head to work with no shower (don't get too close), and I am not in the best of moods. Have you ever overslept on a day you had something important going on? What's the story there?Frequently. I don't do mornings and I have a complete failure in logic when working out how much longer I can lie in with the alarm on snooze. I have overslept for work, job interviews, social events, you name it!
- 6. Ever go shopping for something you know you can't afford? You look at it and even think about how it will look when you get it home, somehow you justify the cost and believe it can happen? And just before you get to the counter come to your senses? What was the last thing you almost bought, but thought better of it? And why the heck do we do that to ourselves? A Nokia 9210 PDA phone. I managed to convince myself that I needed to be able to send emails and code HTML whilst on the train. Except I don't use the train and, until I get another job, I don't have the money for one.
- 7. (It begins again...) It's all such a blur now. I'd asked you to help me wake up but the alarm didn't go off. It was 10 till and just I knew I'd be late. Somehow you got me here on time. How did you do that? I broke into your house last night and set all your clocks forward an hour. So although you thought you were late leaving, you were actually a little early. If I don't get chance to reset our clocks during the day, please remember to do it when you get home.
- BONUS: Can't you see, you belong to me? No. You put the tag on the back of my head and I've only got one mirror. You best not have written anything rude on it or you're going to get such a pounding! ;-)
Well, Blog me! Despite being busy, over the weekend I chilled out by keeping up with the blogs I read and watching what was happening here. In my tracker I found a visit from
Pixels in Time who has linked me as one of the blogs she is "checking out". Cool. She has some excellent photos on her site too. I often wish I could take decent photos as appose to just snapshots but one of the things I have come to accept about myself is that I just do not have the artistic streak that gives you the eye for aesthetics.
A man after my own mind. I came across
this post by
PromoGuy who apparently suffers from
Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and it struck a chord. My brain has always been like this with several thoughts going on at the same time and so much stuff just sloshing around in there that I sometime have trouble picking one thought out from the rest. But I always thought it was just normal, maybe I have a similar problem. Luckily I've never had the conversation he had with his partner. Mine has always known what I'm like and accepts me as I am.
Wow! How busy was that weekend? Well I think I've had about 5 minutes to myself since Friday morning.
Its like having teeth pulled. On Friday Sharon & I went to the dentist. Sharon's afraid of the dentist so that was a bit of a trauma. As usual my teeth were fine (at least one part of me functions as its supposed to) but Sharon needs a shed load of work doing that she has been putting off for over a year. At least if she gets it done within a few months of having Connor we don't have to pay for it. We took James with us because I don't want him to develop his Mum's fear of the dentist.
So that's why its called a waiting room. On Friday afternoon I took Chloe to the Children's Hospital in Birmingham. She has had stiffness and pains in her knees, hips and fingers for about a year (its taken that long to get to see a specialist) and the doctors were worried that she may have arthritis. Sharon's Mum came with us as I had to leave at 5 to go to do a disco and we were worried there may be a delay. And true to form, the hospital kept us waiting for 2 hours before we were seen. I had to dash off and leave them there in the middle of the consultation. Anyway, it turns out that Chloe has flat feet which is causing the pain in her knees and hips. She is also double jointed in her fingers and because she keeps bending them about she is causing the pain. If she stops they should get better but she may have troubles in later life. It a huge relief to find out that she has 2 minor problems rather than arthritis.
Check out the altruism! Friday night's disco was for a couple who were doing a fund raiser for Cancer Research so I did it for no charge. I did, however make the most of the publicity opportunity. That's why I was up until 1am on Thursday building the screen at the front of
the disco that has the name, website and phone number. The main part of the evening was an auction of a number of items with the profit going to charity. One woman paid £360 for an Audi TT for a weekend and the biggest bid was for a top of the range Landrover for a week. The second lot was for a Manchester United football signed by the team that won the European Cup. It was going to go for just £180 and I thought it had to be worth more than that. So I put in a bid for £190. I'm thinking that I may get a local radio station to auction it off and give the money to the charity in return for some promotion on station for
aardvark.dj. However, despite the fact that I can't stand football, I am now the owner of a signed Man Utd football. Any Manchester United fans out there want to make me an offer for it?
Fortress Aardvark Saturday afternoon was spent replacing and improving the security on the garage after it was trashed by the maggots that stole my motorbike. I was going to install an alarm as well but the suppliers was shut. Hopefully I'll get to do that tomorrow (Monday).
Entertaining the boys. I had to drop Sharon at her Mum's before I went to do Saturday nights disco because it was an Officer's Mess summer ball at RAF Stafford and I was going to be out all night. Having been set up by 7.30pm I had absolutely nothing to do until 11.45. Yawn! 4 hours with absolutely nothing to do. I spent sometime practicing mixing with my new CD decks but otherwise just kinda mooched around and watched all the RAF officer get completely drunk. In the end I didn't get home until 6am and slept almost all of the way through the Formula 1 Grand Prix. I'm going to catch the highlights tonight though because it looks like I missed a good one.
See, I told you!
that's a nice rock!
me:
sex:male
age:30
status:married
children:3
Listening:
Barry Diston:Unreleased Stuff
Reading:
Weblogs
Terry Pratchett
Maps
Watching:
Bugger all at the mo, to be honest
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