Is it still legal to write something without mentioning Vampires?

Firstly, a quick note about the photos. I used to take a lot of pictures. I mean lots of pictures. I got pretty good at I think, but I stopped for close to 6 months as I spent more time in a hospital than out of it. As a result I am very off of my game. Instead of RAW I have gone back to using JPEGs because I haven't even unpacked my desktop computer that I do all of my photoediting on. We moved in April. Not wanting to clog up the laptop that both Karin and I use all of my edits to the photos posted here have been done in Picassa. Which is a great tool for photo organizing but shit for editing. I hope to have that fixed by the end of tomorrow and so I hope that the quality of the images here will improve. I try not to rely on my software to fix photos but I do like finer controls on setting my levels and white balance as well as better sharpening tools.

In a related story Karin and I made wonderful progress on our relocation to the second floor today. We'll be sleeping up there tonight, taking turns of course. Tomorrow the "office" side of the floor will be finished (hopefully). My mother helped a great deal by babysitting for us. Her expression when we asked her to babysit was priceless. It is one of the hardest parts of Liam's medical needs that we can't call on those closest to us to help take care of him. Even though we never left the house having someone there to hold him and engage his attention freed Karin and I to get some serious work done. After a day of moving furniture, organizing medical supplies and unopened boxes from the move Karin and I sat back and admired our accomplishment. We looked around our new room and at each other when she said it. "You're going to write your book in this room." She said with a smile. She's absolutely right and I am so happy she pointed it out to me.

The Vent. I talk about it enough and today it occured to me that I should put up a pictures so you could see what I'm talking about. This is Liam's LTV (or LapTop Vent) 950. It is his stationary vent. It is on wheels and so not exactly stationary but it stays in the house rolling between his bedroom and the living room. It is hooked up on one side to an enormous liquid oxygen tank and on the other to a heater/humidifier before ending up hooked to Liam. The blue velcro straps taped to its front are a template for Liam's trach ties. These small straps are changed daily and hold Liam's trach in by connecting around his neck. They need to be cut precisely to fit and so the template helps us do that quickly. Liam has another vent for traveling that does not have a big stand with wheels but comes in a backpack for ease of carrying (typing that just made me laugh out loud).

Here is his vent set up next to Liam's Pac-N-Play. This setup is for when he is in the living room with us. Most of that time is spent on the floor or in his new Special Tomato which is a piece of physical therapy equipment helping him sit upright. When he needs to lay down for a break or for naps he lays in this. The small blue box on the stand to the left is his feeding pump. The blanket hanging over the banister was the covering that would be draped over his isolette (formerly known as an incubator) to give him darkness when he was in the NICU. The small patch of orange fuzz sticking out of the pac-N-Play is Levon the Lion. Liam's favorite toy in the world.

Liam loves his circuit. He can often be found holding onto his circuit while sleeping. I think he knows that they are there to help him. Before he got his trach we heard that babies love to pull their tubes off but Liam has never tried. He's disconnected himself when the tube gets caught on his foot, but he's never done it on purpose. If you just read that outloud please knock on wood for me. All we need is for Liam to figure out that if he pulls it off alarms will sound and parents and nurses will come running. Its a pretty good way for him to get attention.


This is the Special Tomato mentioned above. I think it makes him look like a fighter jet pilot. He fights it for a few minutes but once he realizes that we aren't going to take him out he gets over it and goes to sleep. The frog toy is an Eric Carle toy and as soon as Liam woke up and saw it there he smacked it across the room. Make a note: Liam does not like frogs.


Am I the only one who kept thinking "why the hell are all these lists coming out about the best of the decade?" for weeks before realizing that we are less than 2 months away from 2010?? 2010?? Really? That does not seem possible.

Pictures of terrifying scarecrows. The fourth one down is awesome.

Saw this in a bunch of places already but still think its cool. A flow chart of Hey Jude.

Film clips from TV, and movies that come together into a wonderful song. Just watch it because its hard to describe. The time it must have taken to make this is impressive.

Internal clock has gown so screwy that I am sitting here at 3:10am and I am wide awake. Picked up the 3rd, 4th, and 5th volumes of the Sandman collection from the library yesterday. Going to read until Karin wakes up to relieve me of my post in a few hours.

Night all.