matthearn.com

I hope everybody had a restful batch of holidays and didn’t kill any family members or anything. I myself killed no one, but my time to rest was sparer than a bowling scorecard with nothing but slashes on it.

Was that a stretch? It felt stretchy.

I did all the usual; 847 church services on Christmas Eve, though we found time to take Charles to the pageant at the cathedral, where he sang¹ along with the hymns and the sermon. Christmas morning we set up Sarah’s dad’s video camera, which had been lent to us for this purpose, so that we might videotape Charles doing amusing Christmas things, like eating wrapping paper and ribbons.

Then we went to Sarah’s parents’, where we had eggs and no kegs, followed by a sojourn to my parents’ where I think I fell asleep once. (Christmas is stressful.) It was a super successful day; Charles, as is his wont, was BEYOND happy all day. Seriously, I’ve never seen a child so relentlessly mirthful. The only time he gets really angry about anything is when he’s tired, although if he needs to sleep and doesn’t want to, his wrath is fearful. That boy can SCREAM. Most of the time, the only thing we can do is just let him lay there and yell, and eventually he falls asleep, but it’s not exactly easy on a parent to hear your child making those noises. If he had the capacity for language yet he would definitely be yelling “SCREW YOU BASTARDS!” at the top of his lungs over and over.

He is his mother’s son.

The rest of the week I was on call and had to work, which was boring. Nobody was in the office. I got almost nothing done except for when I got paged during off hours and had to reset people’s passwords or some such frivolity. You’d think I would have used that time to maybe post something on here, but no, I was just about wiped out, and conserving my energies for the weekend. We were marrying off a couple friends, so I needed to make sure my liver was well-prepared for the weekend’s onslaught.

Also, I sang the Star Spangled Banner (TEH BANZORZ!) at a Philadelphia Phantoms game on Friday night; I have a wav file of it made on Todd’s cellphone that I hope to edit and upload later, maybe even make it into a ringtone for when Ambassadors to the UN call me and stuff. (They, and other governmental employees, frequently ask my opinion on foreign affairs. That opinion invariably is “Heck yes we should invade!” I am a highly valued member of President Bush’s team.)

The wedding was beautiful and under 30 minutes, which are basically the two things all weddings should be. (Our wedding was of course nearly an hour long, but then we had a full choir and we sang hymns and things and there was a trumpet player AND a violinist.) The reception was DJ’d by notable local celebrity Dana McDonald, who has a nice radio voice. His tones were DULCET, I tell you. Dulcet.

I drank so much I nearly split my pants. Luckily, I have large friends who are not averse to carrying me home, and there was a shuttle back to the hotel so I didn’t have to drive anywhere. AWESOME.

When I say “sing,” I really mean “yelled at the top of his lungs.” It was stellar.

When we left our narrative yesterday, Team Hearn had arrived at the Outer Banks, I had gone for a bike ride, and then my father and I bought a metric f-ton of booze.

That night, we had A Storm. It was a Noreaster, one of those storms of lore that demolishes homes and moves dunes around. The wind shook the house and drenched everything, but we spent the evening in our tidy little nook knocking back beers and gin until House ended and we all fell asleep. WE ARE WILD PARTY ANIMALS.

On Tuesday, we stayed inside while we awaited the abatement of the rain. That night my brother-in-law arrived, and later that evening my aunt and uncle and cousin as well. And there was much rejoicing.

Wednesday, we did some shopping and prepared ourselves for the onslaught of deliciousness that is Thanksgiving. We also drank more.

Thursday, we ate ourselves retarded.

Friday, I briefly considered going out for a jog, but made myself a sandwich instead. We ran low on beer and had to go out for more, and then went out to dinner, where we drank more beer and ate like kings yet again, ignoring the mounds of leftovers back at the house. And babies in Africa cried.

On Saturday we awoke, did some more shopping, packed ourselves up, and BOUNCED. Charles slept the whole way, aside from a stop once we reached Delaware for KFC and Taco Bell.

Speaking of Charles, he is now 6 months old.

Team Hearn (we’re Hearn-licious) hadn’t been down to the Outer Banks in a few years, so my parents decided that’s where they wanted to do Thanksgiving this year. In the off-season, beach-front homes rent for a song (specifically, “What About Love” by Heart), so my dad got us into some 6-bedroom, 6-bathroom monstrosity a few blocks from the sound.

It’s a six-hour drive, so luckily we have our comfy Honda Accord. Sadly, what we do NOT have is a massive SUV, which is what we need to bring along all of our stuff; the amount of material we have to take along on road trips has roughly DOUBLED since Charles arrived, between his stroller, diaper bag, car seat, toys, bouncy seat, food, spare diapers. At the same time, the space we have to store stuff has about halved, since we used to load up the back seat with crap that wouldn’t fit in the truck, and now we have to put him in there as well as leave one seat free in case one of us has to sit back there with him to keep him from screaming.

The solution: one of those rooftop cargo things, just to complete our transformation into suburban yuppie parents. Woo! But which one? I did a little research online and discovered that Thule, which makes popular bike racks, also makes roof cargo thingies, ranging from $300-600, which made me laugh so hard I chipped a tooth. Sears, on other hand, listed a model running about $120. So we headed to Sears, where they indeed sold what we needed, but had none in stock. The young clerk said, “We’ll have more on Wednesday!” Sadly, this was Friday the 17th, 2 days before we were leaving. He told us Pep Boys sold the same model under a different name, we should give them a try. I gave them a try, and lo and behold we had us an 18 cubic foot storage box for $99, plus an extree $9 for the Accord-specific hooks that hold it to the car. It was awesome. Assembly was a bit taxing, but in the end I basically added another trunk to the car, doubling our storage, and enabling us to take actual clothes and deodorant and stuff.

After church on Sunday we packed up and rolled south. It’s a six-hour drive, counting a few stops; I was assuming we’d have to stop roughly every hour and half to recharge Charles, change diapers, etc. Instead, he slept for about 2 hours until we stopped for lunch, and then slept again until we hit the Bay Bridge, at which time he started screaming, because once you’re on the Bay Bridge you can’t stop for anything short of a breakdown or the cops become angry with you. As soon as we got to a place we could stop, he went back to sleep.

It’s like dealing with a ridiculously intelligent miniature alien who doesn’t speak your language and likes to stand on your groin.

We arrived in record time, thanks to various road improvements through Virginia, and set about to the important task of eating and drinking everything we could get our grubby hands upon. I had, luckily, brought beer and cinnamon rolls.

I got up Monday morning and took a nice long bike ride. This was the only healthy thing I did for the remainder of the week. I compensated for it by going out with my father and spending roughly $180 on booze.

Tomorrow: the things we did with the booze.

Oh hi! Didn’t expect to see you here! Why would I? It’s not like I’ve published anything for 2 weeks, although to be seriously serious for a moment, I do feel very guilty about that, but I was working and then there was vacation and I don’t like to post while on vacation because I’m on FREAKIN’ VACATION man and it’s awesome.

Anyway. Forgive the previous post, I was sleep-deprived. At the time I was working in Philadelphia practicing what would happen if our data center asploded, which meant I got my normal 40 hour workweek completed in 3 days. On the plus side, I got to stay at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Philadelphia, which is some kind of luxurious, although it has a few flaws:

• My room leaked. It was raining like all mad craziness when I got there, and the windows were dripping; after a few hours, the carpet was soaked. It was gross. I could have moved my room, but I was really only using it as a place to come shower and catnap and store my crap.
• The TV didn’t have any RCA inputs so I couldn’t connect my Playstation. (Just because I’m showering and catnapping doesn’t mean I can’t catch up on Grand Theft Auto, fools!)

So the hotel wasn’t so great, but I sort of rediscovered downtown Philadelphia. I hadn’t really spent any time there in something like 20 years; maybe it wasn’t so nice back then. I don’t really recall. It’s sure nice now. Office buildings, and professional folks, and WAY fewer scary toothless women waiting for busses! I felt safe enough to walk from my hotel to the worksite, even after dark. Of course, I wasn’t going anywhere without my enormous black knife, plus it would take a pretty serious mofo to mess with me; I might poop my pants, and what mugger wants to smell that?

Since I was working night shift, I was able to get lunch with Brian at John’s Roast Pork, which was delicious, and also met up with him on Wednesday because the Phantoms were having a daytime hockey game and he invited me to come watch. They lost. I’m not a good luck charm anymore, apparently.

We were done Wednesday night, so I got to spend Thursday and Friday hanging with The Beef, as we’ve taken to calling him. He’s heavy, has developed teeth, and is awfully grabby.

Tomorrow: Teh Vakashunzozrzx!

I’m glad I got my hair cut this week. Otherwise my wife would stab me in the ear with her keys! Ha ha!

But seriously, she’s violent.

Anyway, through the magic of my new phone, I’ve taken some snaps, son. Here is the pre-cut hair (taken right after I got home from an opera performance, hence the sexy curls):

And here’s the sexy new do, having been cut and colored to the tune of a hundred smackeroos:

Whaddaya think? I’m totally gonna get ALL the chicks. By which I mean my wife. And really, I won’t get her either. But at least I’ll have intact eardrums.

I go through cell phones like Rosie O’Donnell goes through butter. I try and pick phones of good quality, but they just don’t last. I’m clumsy, and so they get dropped and banged into things and suddenly they don’t work so grood anymore.

My last phone was some kind of flip-phone with a camera in it. Totally awesome, and completely useless for about the last 6 months because I simply couldn’t be heard on it. The phone before that, I actually paid for the stupid coverage plan, which was nice because when it broke, twice, it was replaced each time.

As soon as I’m eligible for a new phone, I immediately buy one, so I’m on, I think, mobile phone #5. My wife is 2 years into #2, the first one having lasted, I believe, 6 years. Unbelievable.

Anyway, I bought me a Sanyo Katana, which is black and has a camera and eentarweb and omg it is so awesome. I then shelled out an additional $19.99 for Xingtones, which is software that you can use to record, edit, and upload your own ringtones to your phone. Yes: by this weekend I intend to have my phone sing “2 Legit 2 Quit” whenever my wife calls me.

Oh, and if you’ve called me in the last couple months, my phone hasn’t worked, which is why I haven’t answered. It works now! I’m ready to be friends again!

I love our trash guys. They’ll haul away anything. If I were to die this instant, HW could haul my corpse to the curb and I’m pretty sure the trash guys would just throw me in the truck without a second thought.

That, my friends, is service.

Here is a list of the things that our trash guys have taken away:

• Trashbags full of gravel and cat feces, every week
• A large piece of unexplained concrete that I pulled out of my lawn
• Large pieces of concrete that I pulled out of my old patio that have rusty pieces of metal sticking out of them
• Two empty wood pallets
• Approximately 400 pounds of construction sand
• A freaking WASHING MACHINE

That last item I actually called the trash company to ask if I could arrange a special pickup. The lovely lady on the phone said, “Oh, just throw it out there, they’ll take it during the regular run.”

I love my mafia-owned trash company!

Oh, btw, if you’re having trouble getting to charleshearn.com, you aren’t alone. It’s misbehaving because the registrar can’t seem to get rid of the old nameservers. I don’t know why. I’m hoping it’ll clear up in a day or two.

I got pulled over on Saturday, but received no ticket. Wooooooooo, says I.

It was rather late (I had actually just turned the clock in my car back, as it was 2am EDT and 1am EST) and was heading home from the Carmen cast-party (Carmen opened TEH BOMBZORZ, as expected) and traffic was heavy (I don’t know why; this is the third parenthetical aside this sentence, a new record even for me). Over on the right hand side of I-95, the cops were sitting with their flashers going, which usually indicates they’ve already pulled over somebody, so slowing down is dumb. Everybody, of course, slowed down, including one idiot that swerved in front of me and then hit the brakes.

So I flashed my highbeams, swerved around him, and accelerated back to a healthy seventy miles per hour. Apparently the policefolks disapproved of this move, so they chased me down.

“What’s going on?” he asked. He appeared to be one bright policeman. What does one say to that? I went with

“Um…nothing, officer.”

“Where you goin’ in such a hurry? I saw you whip in and out of traffic back there.”

“Well, sir, the fellow in front of me swerved into my lane and hit the brakes when he saw you folks, so I had to swerve around him to keep from hitting him.”

The officer grunted at this. “You have anything to drink tonight?”

“Yes sir. I had two beers about 2 hours ago.” This was true; I’d stopped drinking at the party around midnight.

“Just two beers?”

“Yes sir.”

“Got your license, registration and insurance?” I handed them over, and he went back to his car, while I sat and waited. I couldn’t figure out exactly what they intended to charge me with; he couldn’t possibly have clocked my speed from where he was. I assumed they might charge me with an unsafe lane change, which I figured I could probably fight successfully in court, since technically a guy did change lanes in front of me and hit his brakes. I assumed I would probably get a warning for having one headlight out (the Mazda seems to go through them like Rush Limbaugh goes through oatmeal cream pies). After a few minutes, the cop returned.

“Slow down.”

“Yes sir.” I drove off. A surreal experience, all in all.

I’m heck of busy today, running around like a wild man (who isn’t?), but I wanted to share something amusing with you, and so therefore I give you this. Just pictures, not a movie or sound, but highly entertaining. The one that keeps making me wet my pants is this one:

Phenomenal times.

How strange must it be to be an infant. You wake up, a familiar friendly face giggles and coos at you, changes your clothes and diaper, feeds you, and then hands you off to another vaguely familiar face, that takes you outside and puts you into a car. You fall asleep. You wake up in a completely different place, surrounded by completely different people.

It’s like time travel, I think.

Yesterday, I picked up Charles at his grandparents’ house and put him in my car, where he fell asleep. Then I headed over to the Opera Delaware studios to try on a costume and wig, at which time his OTHER grandparents showed up (Mom and Dad are in the chorus of the opera) and woke him up. Surrounded by complete strangers, he was, and pretty freaked out by it. Luckily, he’s a relatively happy baby, so he calmed down nicely and smiled for everybody.

Then he got his vengeance by flat-out refusing to go to sleep until 10pm.

I’m still kinda sick, myself, but somehow I’ll survive. The agonizing throat pain has subsided, so now I just have some sniffles. I fully expect Charles and Sarah to get sick simultaneously. Really looking forward to that.

It is getting, it is getting, it is getting rather hectic all up in this piece. Yo.