One. Eli told me to count so that he could hide. When I finished counting and shouted, “Ready or not, here I come!” Eli giggled loudly and then leapt from his hiding place, grabbing me around the legs. “Here I am, daddy!” he said.

Two. Eli asked me to hide, so on a lark I sat next to Misty on the couch and pulled an afghan over me, hiding me from view. Eli passed me four or five times and only found me when Misty pulled back a corner of my cover for him.

Three. A while later I draped the afghan over an obviously empty chair. He went straight there and jumped onto the chair. Then he looked very confused.

Yes, yes, Geof, I heard you about the six questions bit. Sigh, the rigors of being wanted. I will point out in passing that this meme is actually ten questions long.

0) What’s your name and website URL? (optional, of course)

Stephen Granade. My website? You’re soaking in it.

1) What’s the most fun work you’ve ever done, and why? (two sentences max)

Maintaining a website about adventure games for a dot-com company back in the days when dot-com money materialized on every good kid’s doorstep. I got to talk to a lot of interesting people and play a fair number of good games, and–much to my surprise–I had a positive impact in several peoples’ lives.

2) A. Name one thing you did in the past that you no longer do but wish you did? (one sentence max)

Played in jam bands, whether jazz or otherwise.

B. Name one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep putting it off? (one sentence max)

Write genre fiction.

3) A. What two things would you most like to learn or be better at, and why? (two sentences max)

Hm, that’s hard. The first thing would be learning to ignore guidelines when doing so would be beneficial.

B. If you could take a class/workshop/apprentice from anyone in the world living or dead, who would it be and what would you hope to learn? (two more sentences, max)

Chopin, though I have no idea what kind of piano masterclass he would give. I suppose I’d have to really brush up on my piano playing, though.

4) A. What three words might your best friends or family use to describe you?

Assuming the person in question isn’t mad at me when you ask them to describe me, maybe they’d go with empathetic, hard-working, and funny.

B. Now list two more words you wish described you…

Relaxed; tall. Actually, I’m not sure I really care about being tall, but it might be cool to try out for a while.

5) What are your top three passions? (can be current or past, work, hobbies, or causes– three sentences max)

1. Interactive fiction.
2. SF/fantasy, primarily written.

Those are the two most consistent ones.

6) (sue me) Write–and answer–one more question that YOU would ask someone (with answer in three sentences max)

What are you most proud of?

That one I’ll have to think about for a while.

Last time I was pregnant, we agonized about the stuff we needed to get for the baby. Where to start? What to get used? What to buy new? What not to buy at all? When do I register? And then once you’ve answered all those questions there are just about 1.4 billion products available on the market and all their packaging insists that if you don’t have this product your baby will be deformed for life. It’s tough and I was never so glad to see the last of Babies R Us and Target and their hand-held scanners of evilness.

To help us with the task last time, I bought a book called Baby Bargins and it was incredibly useful in helping us weed through all the unnecessary stuff. As I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, when we don’t know how to do something around here we buy a book. So this particular one was our sanity when I was a crazy pregnant lady last time. I loaned my copy to a friend and never got it back, so after I told Ashley that I didn’t have ours, she loaned me her newer edition. Of course, I had been the one to originally tell her to buy it, so see how the world all works out sometimes?

Last night I sat down and reviewed the couple of big products we need to replace stuff that is either too old or worn out from Eli. I decided to check what was online. I did my entire registry process in about an hour. I think the last time it took several weeks, if not a month, to make the list and then get to the stores to get it done. I am so glad to have that chore over with and now I can move on to other closets.

A so-called “friend” gave me several of the early Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books to read a while back. I’ve been meaning to write an insightful analysis of the series, but I got bogged down in other things. Until the eventual day when I write my analysis, why not read The Annotated Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, which covers the highlight of the comic book adaptation of the first novel in the series.

I have returned from our Christmas holiday in Arkansas with much energy and a dedicated spirit to cleaning out all nooks and crannies of our house.

My super step-mom gave me a huge bag full of clothes in hopes of staving off me having to buy maternity clothes. I vowed that I would clean out my closet before any new clothes went in, so this morning I have cleaned out every part of my closet.

Even (gasp!) the purses and (double gasp!) the shoes!

I am ever so slowly getting rid of shoes that aren’t Birkenstocks. I actually thought that I’d get rid of all the non-’stocks this cleaning but there were several pairs of shoes I couldn’t bring myself to part with.

Yesterday, while shopping at Wally World, I purchased several closet organizer-type objects. Two of the three are for Stephen’s closet and the third is for my cross-stitching stash in the office closet. Stephen doesn’t know it yet but I see closet cleaning in his future this weekend. (Hi Honey!) We’re also going to do some closet rearranging/shelving additions so that the chest of drawers that is in my closet can go into Eli’s room and the changing table/dresser can go into the baby’s room. Stephen wants to add some shelving to his closet as well. I thought that it would be a good idea to have the closets cleaned out before we start adding new stuff so that we don’t have to tackle the cleaning and the adding at once.

So far, I have created one giant bag of my previous life’s work clothes to go to the women’s prison ministry and started a second bag to go to Purple Heart Veterans. Also, I made a giant bag of trash.

How in the world do we accumulate so much stuff? Thank goodness we didn’t get many things for Christmas. We mostly got money from our parents and we plan to use that on our trips to AZ and MA.

President Bush declared today to be a national day of mourning for President Gerald Ford, who died the day after Christmas. We’re having an unrelated get-together here tonight, but given the declaration, how can we not pause and honor Ford? With that in mind, we will be handing out presidential pardons to everyone. If you’d like to do the same, why not download the PDF of our pardons? Those who needed forgiveness for enjoying Adam Sandler movies other than “Punch-Drunk Love” will thank you.

Foot!

We’re having a foot! Actually, it’s still a baby with all the usual parts. There was just a foot in the way of one particular part that we kinda wanted to see today. But all is well and he/she is healthy. I gained two pounds and considering the baby weighs 1.5, I think that’s pretty good. My doctor says we can check for gender next month when I’m in, if their schedule isn’t too far behind.

Here as some photos:

While Stephen is poking at the new electronic thingie we bought ourselves for Christmas, I decided to scan the Christmas books.

• 700 total books scanned.
• 22 books scanned today.
• Stephen’s count: 395 total.
• My count: 140 total.
• Eli’s count: 164 total. The kid got 18 books for Christmas!?!?!
• Baby TBA’s count: 2. The kid isn’t even here yet. But he/she has books!
• Borrowed Books I found out that I didn’t return: Alana: 1, I swear I thought that Donald Miller book was mine. Wishful thinking, obviously.
• Books returned to me: 1 from Stephen’s mom. I didn’t even know I owned this book. Bonus!
• I took back 15 books and we managed to lug home 22. It is officially a losing battle.

We’re back! With tons of Christmas photos. More posts tomorrow…