Barnaby Edward Goodfellow

Little Barney was born on 30th August at 6.19 am. He is 8lb and extremely cute. Mother and Baby are well, Father is knackered and is going to bed now. More soon.

Stay on target...stay on target...

Well, one way or t'other Beth is going to have the most significant day of her short life tomorrow, as she will cease to be a single child.

M&I are off to the hospital in the morning and the doctors will try and kick things along by popping M's waters. Should that not do the trick, then they will perform a caesarian in the afternoon. Either way, the kid will arrive, puking and mewling and all that.

I'm extremely excited, you can read M's thoughts on her blog.

As and when things happen, I will be sure to blog it before I tell any actual people. Yippee!

Pale Blue Dot

My readings on rationalism have led me to this video - quite, quite brilliant.

Revelations: now the second best blog in the family

Still no baby brother or sister for B. M is at the doctors today and we are hoping for some result from that, maybe breaking the waters will do the trick.

B's language is developing at an unprecedented rate, together were a willingness to assert herself and test boundaries. Instead of "no" she has taken to "maybe not" and, instead of a simple affirmative, she now favours a wide-eyed "yeah, I know".

So, a typical conversation might go:

Dad: Do you want to wear the blue top?
Beth: Maybe not.
Dad: How about this one? It's lovely.
Beth (very earnest): Yeaah, I knooow.

So, to bring the 2 threads together. We were discussing the induction options for a VBAC, and I asked about the possibility of using oxytocin. Beth piped up authoritatively:

"Nooo tocytocin"

M&I creased up and Beth joined in merrily, though she can have no idea why we were laughing. Very cute.

For more baby news, subscribe today to M's new blog - Shamblings. Enjoy!

Have we had the baby yet?

Nope. Thanks for asking.

Due date was last Friday...

...still waiting.

ADHD comment bait

I've been loving the atheist/anti-religion movement stuff thats been going on recently. My hero in the, ahem, crusade, is the splendidly cantankerous Christopher Hitchens. Indeed he has converted me from being an atheist into being an antitheist.

In essence, this means that not only does God not exist but I am glad he doesn't. God is a tyrannical figure who knows not only my action but my every thought, who judges me on those actions and thoughts, and who condemns me to an eternity of unimaginable torture and misery if those actions and thoughts do not accord with his arbitrary wishes...but he loves me. Hmm.

By contrast, the wonderful Richard Dawkins is something of a Professor Yaffle figure (to use Charlie Brooker's hilarious comparison) but I love this uncharacteristically startling moment from the interesting Beyond Belief symposium:

Goodfellow and Graham, 2007

I am finally a published author - yippee! My mate Sarah and I wrote an article about our blog at the ALIA 2006 conference which was accepted by a proper peer review journal called the Electronic Library. I am well chuffed.

You can read the article, should you wish, at http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/1609

The reference is something like

Goodfellow and Graham (2007), The blog as a high-impact institutional communication tool, The Electronic Library 25 (4) pp.395-400

Academic ubiquity, here I come.

Overstimulation

The weekend was a kind of extended lap of honour for Beth as an only child - number 2 due this Friday, or sooner if M gets her wish.

Friday night: Dinner party at our place.
Highlight: Legge's got the Janus box set! Sweeeet.

Saturday morning: Swimming at a local pool.
Highlight: The look on Beth's face as she clung onto M's back on a swim - scared and delighted at the same time.

Saturday afternoon: Lari and Rob's leaving do before going to Germany, held in a park on a beautiful day.
Highlight: B sitting on my lap quietly while we watched some blokes playing football, thereby giving me my first chance of explaining the glories of the Greatest Game in the World.

Saturday evening: Val and Max babysat B so M and I went out for a Malaysian meal and a Die Hard film.
Highlight: Roti with curry sauce.

Saturday night: Sunderland v Spurs
Highlight: Football - it's back back back!

Sunday morning: Shops at Hornsby.
Highlight: B clambering up to the highest level of the Softplay gymnasium (about 10 feet up), disappearing, and then reappearing with a huge grin at the bottom of the near-vertical slide.

Sunday afternoon: Barbie at Dani and Todd's.
Highlight: Discovering subsequently that Todd proposed and was accepted - yippee!

Sunday evening: Dinner at Max and Val's.
Highlight: Spinach and ricotta cannelloni.

Sunday night: Arsenal's first game was, for some reason, not on telly so I spent an hour and a half pressing F5 in front of the BBC football website.
Highlight: Hleb getting a last-minute winner - come on!

I am now trying to catch up on sleep.

Headlines

OK, I'm a librarian and I'm from Brentwood so I couldn't let this pass. It's a headline about a librarian strike in Essex:

BOOK LACK IN ONGAR

Arf!

See also:
SUPER CALLIE GO BALLISTIC, CELTIC ARE ATROCIOUS
MAN FOUND DEAD IN GRAVEYARD

More in the comments would be most welcome.

Young Alexes

A busy but highly enjoyable weekend started with an Arctic Monkeys gig with Nick and Lou, but no M sadly. I was relieved that they took the step up to the cavernous Hordern Pavilion with aplomb and played their customary blinder.

Saturday daytime was my nephew Alex's 8th birthday with various in-laws. Beth discovered the joys of trampolining which was lovely, and she had a great time discovering the joy of the party bag.

Then it was up to Avoca for a weekend with Nick and Lou, which consisted largely of loafing around in the sunshine reading and chatting about nothing in particular. Beth loved the company, and she had a great time collecting shells on the beach. The highlight for me was watching this priceless gem - how could anything so laughable become so popular?:

Sober

I started my new job on Wednesday and all is going well so far. The funniest bit is having my own office, which is a new thing for me. I need to get some personalised stuff in there, maybe some cheap movie posters and some photos of M&B.

The other major change is that I am based in town, so I am officially a commuter again. The journey takes a little longer but i am on a train, and the opportunity to read is a treat. I look at other passengers who clearly do this journey every day, and so many many of them just gaze into space for forty minutes - no paper, no book, not even an ipod or radio. What are they thinking? Don't they realise how much time they are wasting? It brings two quotes to mind:

I had not though death had undone so many. - Eliot
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you might miss it. - Bueller

Child #2 is due in two weeks. I am strictly on call now, so no booze even at an Arctic Monkeys gig tonight. It's my favourie worst nightmare.