matthearn.com

Hey, we all just had us a baby and whatnot, so posts will be…few. In the meantime, you can always go check out Josephine’s homepage. The latest update is crazy cute.

UPDATE: 7:00: heading to the OR in 10. Sarah’s mood is “freaked out, man.”

UPDATE: 6:13: the nurse is having difficulty finding a useful vein in Sarah’s arm, mostly because Sarah is a ZOMBIE. Sarah: “Braaaaaiiiiiinnnnns…”

Up at 4:30; at hospital at 5:30; going through medical history. T-minus 90 minutes, people! Who has an iPhone and is ready for a baby? Moi.

Updates throughout the morning.

Hilarious account of a dude doing his first Broad Street Run. A braver soul than I. Also he apparently murdered a fellow runner:

I like cars. Specifically, I like fast cars. It goes without saying, therefore, that I’ve never really owned one, because if I did I would be imprison’d and/or dead. But because I’m, frankly, reaching for ideas today (24 hours until GO BABY), here is a list of cars that I’ve had. (Not necessarily owned, but cars for which I have been the primary driver.)

• 

  The Barge

  1972 Pontiac Grand Ville. This was my “first,” the car I drove almost exclusively after I got my license in 1994. We called it “The Barge,” because it is quite literally the largest sedan I’ve ever seen. It handled like a sponge, but had a HUGE engine and could hustle. It lasted until early 1996, my senior year, when the engine problems finally killed it, and my dad sold it to a guy who wanted to take the massive 454 engine block, rebuild it, and put it in a GTO. I still have dreams in which I’m driving this car.


• 

  The Benzo

  1983 Mercedes Benz 240D. After The Barge died, I got to drive The Benz, off-and-on, until the end of senior year. It was a nice car, built like a tank, but it had a diesel engine with all the acceleration of a mule. Gas mileage was good, but the car would not go faster than 83 miles per hour, and it took like 3 minutes to get there. Had a nice Benz suspension, though, so it handled nice. It met a sad end in the summer of ’96, not long before I went off to college, when my sister bounced it off another car and a rock.


• 

  The Saturn

  1996 Saturn SL2. My mom purchased this while I was away on Senior week in 1996, for the simple reason that I had the Benz in Rehoboth, my dad had his white Saab 9000, and Mom needed wheels. Also my sister was getting her license, so they really needed a third car again, even with me going off to school. After my 2 year sentence at Peabody Conservatory, I transferred to UD and needed a car to get to jobs/rehearsals/gigs, and my sister went off to college herself, so the Saturn was transferred to me. It was my faithful ride through three years of college, until I traded it in on my truck.


• 

  Mine was black.

  2002 Ford F150. Another vehicle I dream of at least once a month; I loved this truck. I had just graduated and had my first real job, so I felt I deserved a high-end automobile; to that end, I went to the Ford dealership and had mine custom-designed. Mostly this was because I wouldn’t drive one with an automatic transmission, and apparently no dealer in the country had a V8 available with a stick, but this meant I was able to pick every option I wanted, down to the hot stereo, 4×4, color, and pimpin’ alloy wheels. It was a fantastic truck, but after a while, gas prices were going way up, and my wife was having to drive all over the state for her job in a rapidly aging Mazda. So, we traded in the truck for a brand-new Honda Accord, and I started driving Sarah’s old car.


• 

  Izzy

  1998 Mazda Protege. This car served us well for 10 years, by far the longest of any car we’ve had. Sarah got it in late 1997 when she was driving down to see me at Peabody every few weeks, and continued to be the primary driver until I took it over in 2005. It was cramped, underpowered, automatic transmission’d, and handled like a lawnmower. Sarah was sad to see it go, but when I got my hands on the Saab, we gave it to a car donation company, who sold it and gave the proceeds to the Choir School.


• 

  Current Whip

  1997 Saab 9000 CSE Turbo. Actually an older car than the Mazda I gave up for it, but manifestly bigger, and faster. Also safer; it’s got airbags all over the place, and weighs nearly as much as my truck did. Plus it’s a stick-shift, so I feel like a man again. I managed to acquire it through the benevolence of my father; he bought my mom a new car a while back, but wasn’t offered a significant amount in trade-in, so he kept both his Saabs, the 9000 as the daily commuter, and the 900 convertible as his “man about town” car. When he started working from home, he no longer needed a commuter car, and donated it to, um, me. EPIC WIN!

Those are my cars. What do you be drivin’?

For those of us who are tired of hearing about Swine Flu and how it’s a global frickin’ pandemic (thanks, cable news!), GraphJam comes to the rescue:

Go to Dinoremix, and make your own remixes of, you guessed it, Dinosaur Comics! I did not make this one, but it is my favorite. I did, however, make the one below, but it’s not as good. Make your own goodies and post the results in comments! Both of you! Do it!

This, this right here, is why the Onion is the best news source available for any topic, from politics to sports to sex (AKA “nooky”).

Oh heck yes:

The Bacone
A bacon cone filled with scrambled eggs and country gravy topped with a biscuit.

OMG CHECK IT OUT

I’m in love.

A conservative blogger shows the usual right-wing class. (Warning: very naughty words.)

Since we’re having a baby, HW and I get a lot of people asking us “Hey, have you picked a name?  What is it?”  To which we have to reply, “Yes, we’ve picked a name, and no, we’re not sharing it.”

(Sarah is getting extra saucy about it; someone apparently asked her, “Have you picked any names for the baby?” and she replied “Yes, the last one.”)

In the spirit of sharing, here is a list of names for our daughter that we will not be using:

• Sophia – One of my favorite names.  Sadly, it is also one of America’s current favorite names; it’s more popular right now than “Madeleine,” another name I’m fond that is highly ranked at babynames.com. (Some people spell it Madelynn; those people have a special place in hell reserved for them.)
• Sadie – Can’t not think of the Maharishi.
• Millicent – Sadly, Sarah thinks this name is dorky. I love it so much I’d give it to two daughters and have to number them like George Foreman did his sons.


• Charlotte – Sarah pushed for this one, but the thought of having two kids named “Charles” and “Charlotte” made me cough stomach acid.


• Victoria – Another favorite of mine that’s sadly in use by a close friend’s daughter. Things would just get confusing.


• Brooklyn – I would pour boiling mercury into my empty eye sockets first. Also: why “Brooklyn?” Why not “Staten Island” or “The Bronx?”


• Clara – Another personal favorite that’s kind of on an uptick. Unacceptable.


• Deborah – I like the name, but not the diminutive form.
• MacKenzie – One of a father’s primary tasks, as we all know, is “keep her off the pole.” (Stripper pole. Keep up, America.) Not using a name like “MacKenzie” reduces her pole-riding odds from 90% to about 8%. See also: Madison.

In the interest of full disclosure: the above may or may not be true.