I don’t know how to greet / wish people a *good* Kwanzaa… ah who cares, it’s not a real holiday anyway! Also today is Boxing Day! Besides… I’d rather just post about our Christmas experience this year.

We got up, Lori made breakfast: bacon, potatoes and omelets!. We ate in the living room and watched the Revolution Christmas DVD. After breakfast, Lori opened her large present which was hidden behind the couch. It was a guitar, finally after 4 or 5 years of me wanting to get her a guitar for Christmas, I did.

As for me, I got Guitar Hero and Rock Band, that was our agreement. Oh yeah, and a baby for Christmas!! We also talked about how this would be our last Christmas with just us and how next year we’d have a baby (who’d have no idea what was going on) to open gifts!

Lori played with her Guitar for a while, which brought back many memories for her and within a few minutes she found her old chord and Beatles song books and was playing again. Not to feel left out, I decided to bust out my Axe and play some online Rock Band!

We went over to my Grandfather’s house for lunch and hung out with my family. After that we headed over to Holly and Jim’s house for desert. We made our way home and I started to pull out the Guitar for Rock Band. It was then Lori said, I wanna play the drums. I said sure lets do it.

Well, it turns out Lori has great rhythm and loves to play the Drums in Rock Band. Finally I got her to play this game and she enjoys it. She created her own (fem) drummer character and we played a few songs then jumped into some online band play adding another guitar (bass) and a singer.

Lori was feeling good about her playing, so I decided for our final song to play Run To The Hills (which is my favorite Iron Maiden song) This is supposed to be the hardest song on EXPERT mode. She played it in EASY and did super. I was impressed.

Today I went to see Walk Hard, which was funny! After coming home, we jumped back into some Rock Band, this time with special guest vocalist Donovan and we jammed out on a few songs. Later, Lori and I started our own band, played some local gigs. We’re on our way to tour the world!

We were at Trader Joe’s and I was walking towards the cereal. There was a semi frazzled looking man (SFLM) asking one of the store clerks if they had anymore Hemp Milk. I nearly laughed out loud. The clerk informed the guy that they didn’t have any.

SFLM: That’s just too bad man, it’s good stuff, I love it so much better than regular milk, it’s kind of nutty.

ME: But does it have any THC in it? (I just couldn’t hold it in anymore)

SFLM: No but most people seem to think it would.

ME: Ah that’s just too bad, it’d be so much better and REALLY COOL then.

SFLM: Yeah it’d probably be pretty good, though I don’t know if my 2 year old would like it then.

ME: You never know…

SFLM: Yeah, he may actually like it a lot then!

ME: Good luck on your Hemp-milk journey!

HIPPIES!!! What else can they put Hemp in? Does simply adding Hemp make a product, a super product?

Ok this is more of a journal post, because I don’t want to forgot how I found out about ‘baby’.

It was Saturday November, 3rd, the day of our High School Reunion. I think we made a trip to Target that day, don’t quote me on that please. Lori purchased a few preggo (not ragu) tests, just in case. We came home and had a few hours to kill before the reunion.

Being Saturday and also because I had guitar hero III for a few (ok, almost 5-ish) days and was still feeling rookie-ish I decided it was time to play some RAWK! I queued up The Metal, which is a must! About that time Lori sneaked into the bathroom (along with her preggo, not ragu, tests) I queued up ONE (by Metallica) which was my first time playing.

I loved it, in fact I might’ve ‘cranked’ up the volume a bunch and just ROCKED OUT to that song! Little did I know, Lori was in the bathroom taking a test, which I’ve heard from a few is one of the hardest tests to take! Well she *passed* the test and started to get real excited…. I, continued to ROXOR’D out to ONE…

6 or so minutes later I finish the last few notes of ONE…. I nailed it (on easy) I think I hit like 92%. Little did I know Lori was waiting for this *stupid* long song to finish… Feeling great, that I *accomplished* the task of rocking out to ONE, I’m standing there with a grin on my face, blood pumping and complimenting myself. I look over to my left and I see Lori standing with a *pee-stick* who then announces, honey I’m pregnant and starts crying.

Being the *guy* I am I responded with, what does that mean? Hey, I was looking at some test with a line on it! She explained again, and I stood there with the dumb plastic guitar strapped to me. She said, aren’t you going to hug me. I immediately remembered where I was and what had just happened and took the guitar off and hugged Lori and told her this was great and tried to calm her down.

After a few minutes of hugging and tears of joy… I realize that we had to get ready for the reunion. It was hard to recompose and get ready for the event knowing what we just found out and knowing that we couldn’t tell anyone about our news.

The reunion was fun, though I was feeling pretty sick (due to a sinus infection which had begun a few days before). We ended up staying for part of the evening and were both glad to leave. Later I found out Lori took the test because she wanted to find out if she could drink or not that evening!

I finally got around to doing this:

What do you think?

UPDATE, I Took the Multiple Intelligences Test:

I thought the structure of this test wasn’t as good, though I do like music a ton!

BTW, Lori approved of this *doctored* image

Well folks, here is our announcement to the world. Lori and I will have a baby sometime around July 15th. The picture above is of an ultrasound (what a strange video camera that is!) of our Baby, who at the time was figured to be 9 weeks and 5 days old.

This is a frontal view and you can make out the fuzzy shapes (from right to left) of a head, two eyes, upper and lower body, two arms and legs (which aren’t fully developed quite yet). Lori thinks our child looks like a gummy bear! During the ultrasound we saw the tiny flashes of a heart beat and the baby was moving it’s arms quite a bit over it’s face!

It was a very cool and emotional experience to go through. We were now watching our child which until that moment was represented by many months of trying, then a crazy colored line on a stick (which confused / surprised a Guitar Hero playing fool like me!), nausea, cramps, tiredness and moodiness!

We were also able to fully surprise all of our family and here’s a photo of two (soon to be) Grandmothers.

We stopped by my Dad’s house and surprised him. Then we were off to Lori’s parents house for a casual get together (or so they thought), we were to have Enchiladas and Pie. Lori presented her mom with a gift which was for Christmas and something she would probably like to display for the remainder of the season. Lori’s mom opened up the gift and was confused for a few moments which was immediately followed with an immense amount of joy, jumping and hugging. Lori’s dad was a little confused at the gift and his wife’s reaction until he understood what it was and then he was way over joyed and proud. I believe he immediately cracked open a bottle of wine and poured me a glass to toast the good news.

Next we composed an email with the image attached, to Lori’s grandmother in Georgia. Lori called her grandmother and told her that she took a picture of her Christmas gift and sent it in an email so she needed to check her email. It took grandmother a few minutes to get her email open and load the message, then she accidentally zoomed into the photo and so she was having trouble figuring out what she was going to be looking at. She panned around for a minute and then we all heard her scream with joy and then begin to cry.

After this, we invited over Lori’s family friends, Jim and Holly (who are like grandparent’s to her) for pie and socializing. Meanwhile we were still waiting for my mom to stop by from her long day / evening of shopping. We decided to wait until my mom arrived to give her the gift (and not tell Holly and Jim just yet.)

After a good half-an-hour or so of normal conversation my mom made it over. We handed her the gift she put it down and said, ‘oh thanks, I’ll open this on Christmas,’ but we insisted she open it now. My mom was confused, because she opened the gift backwards. However, once she realized what the gift was she immediately she started to cry and dispense hugs. Holly was in mid-sentence and when she realized the news / gift she responded with a ‘oh my gosh… I didn’t even know, this whole time…’

It was fun being able to totally surprise our family and make this moment even more special!

So, I’m going to be a father and we’re going to have a baby! It’s all such a strange concept that is feeling more normal each day. I am happy, proud and scared at the same time!

We think the cat knows what’s going on, as she constantly wants to sit on Lori’s lap!

If you’re like me you love music. If you’re like me you’re also looking for new music. It seems most radio stations are into heavy rotation and selling a select few artists a month which is making it just that much harder to find new music. Morning Becomes Eclectic can be a decent showcase but I find it’s limited and I have less control over what could be playing. I love Pandora, it’s very organic and suggestive… but they have a decent library of popular music you probably already know about. What to do?

Enter thesixtyone, an online music showcase. The idea is pretty simple, artists upload their music, listeners create profiles and are given “points” to bump music up to the next level. Bumping unknown/undiscovered to lesser known artists cost you more points and as the artists move up levels their “cost” decreases. Though if you bump an artist and then they get bumped you end up getting “paid” points. So the earlier you “discover” the artist / song the more points you get.

With this system it forces you to bump only what you really like otherwise you spend points rather quickly. You can add songs to your profile and subscribe to users and watch their progress also.

There are a few ways to browse the site. First of all create a profile (it’s free) and if i’ve inspired you to try this out be sure to put me (abricko) as your referrer (i’ll get points) and then start the fun.

You can listen to songs by genre many have been discovered or started the bump process. You can comment on songs, add them to your profile, bump them or share them with a friend via email. Another way which is more random is to use “The Rack” which is located on the right side of the main page and just play through the tracks and when you hear something you like add it or bump it.

It’s pretty addicting beyond the discovery of new music because of the point system. You can also earn more points by logging in daily (+10 each day) or +1 each song you listen to in the rack, +5 for each friend you refer (+20 for each level they move up to).

Try it out, you might like it. I look forward to subscribing to your profile and seeing what you discover. Together we can destroy the record companies and the stupid RIAA!

If you’ve seen Idiocracy you’ll get this (and if you still haven’t seen it, why not?) They are making a Brawndo energy drink!

Remember it’s got what plants need!

Continued from here…



Today after church and lunch and since we were in Downey, Lori and I headed to All American (we were 2 of maybe 5 there) Home Center. Now it’s Sunday, after church time and the Christmas shopping season so you can imagine they were busy. I found a good parking spot in the front and met Lori in the garden / tree department. We picked a tree to our specifications pretty quickly this time. Being busy, I grabbed the tree and asked the guy if Lori could just take the tag and pay for it while I wait with the tree so it doesn’t have to go into the rack and then I’d have to wait in 4 lines (to drop off tree, to pay for tree, to wait in my car to enter the “tree pickup area” and to wait for them to find my tree again.

The kid seemed confused so he brought his “manager” to answer the question who said no, but I could take the tree to the register and take it out myself. I said fine and lunged the tree overhead and charged into the store! The store was BUSY filled with huge families most with 6 - 12 per group (and the kids rolling all over the floors). Most of the people didn’t get that I had a tree and was trying to get through or just didn’t care, so I announced tree coming through move or you’ll encounter it, Merry Christmas. I got quite a few open mouth / confused looks from people who just decided to stop in front of me so like a logging truck just rolled through. Lori jumped in front of me and cleared a path. We made it to the register, paid and I loaded my truck and left for Lakewood. Record time at the AAHC, I was proud and laughing at how funny the situation was and what I did to get through.

We came home and began to decorate the tree. This tree fit perfectly (against my fears) in the corner and does look nice. We also hung up the pine lights which suck to make look nice because they store as a nice flat roll! Maggie is still not too happy with the tree though she’s now beginning to warm up to it. I predict she’ll knock off at least 2 or 3 ornaments by morning.

Last year our trees were named Grimmace (and 2.0). This year our tree is named Townsend Tree, due to it’s tall slender appearance. thought it was almost named Wallace (because of the tall/slender appearance and it kind of rhymes with Grimmace).

Some photos here