Baby blog shoutout and random thoughts

First off, keep up with all the Caitlin Tooker baby news here:

Livejournal - all the baby blog goodness plus a bunch of pictures

Flickr - more pictures of Caty, and others from the last couple of years.

Wow! We're two and a half months into babyland!! Caty has sure demanded plenty of time and attention from us. ALL our time and attention, I should say. And that's just fine because she's a baby. We have a baby!! Sometimes both Julie and I take a step back and take a good look at this tiny creature we brought into the world. It's crazy. She is super amazing, we love her so much. She does so many super cute things during the day and we have been trying to capture as much of it as possible. Julie is the expert at this and has taken I don't even know how many pictures. Soon I hope to put up some slideshows on youtube, and I'll put the links up on this site so stay on the lookout! We have had some hilarious and trying experiences regarding Caty, so make sure you check out the livejournal baby blog. I hope to keep that one even more regularly updated than I do this one. Hey - you can't blame me that it's been two months since the last entry (well, almost three) because this little girl pretty much won't allow you to do ANYthing except take care of her. She doesn't really like to take naps unless she's being held by somebody. I swear she'll be totally zonked out and then you put her down and, ZAM, she's up in 15 minutes or less. That definitely makes it hard to get anything done around the house. It's a time consuming battle just to stay ahead of the basic cleaning up of the place. I swear, it can go from moderately clean to a disaster in just a day and a half. And the piles of laundry, I swear.

If only I had this kind of perspective when I was living at home, I would have appreciated my mother way more. It's not like I didn't appreciate her. But I guess I sort of just 'expected' the laundry to be done. Sure, I helped fold the dry laundry and match the socks or whatever, but I certainly was not the main laundry person. I can totally see how much she would appreciate me and my bros helping out and doing our chores, it would take a great amount of work off of her shoulders.
I've been thinking about perspective a lot lately. I can just think about how much better my decisions would have been if only I could have seen things from a different angle. It's kind of a crazy thing to think about. Just how much wiser and more worldly you get as you age. But then again, making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn and get that wisdom. What a pain in the butt.

By the way, working on Halloween sucks when it's your baby's first.

You know what I dislike? Fashion.
Also the saying, 'green is the new black.' Probably any saying that goes 'blank is the new blank.' Don't give me this 'is the new' bs. If you ever read American Psycho, there's lots of crap about tailored suits and how to correctly wear certain ties and fabrics and things like that. It boggles my mind to know that some people actually think deeply about these sort of things. I mean, if it's a hobby it's okay, but if you look down on others and are a snob about it... then I don't like you. I can talk about how I hate fashion all day, but it would be boring.

You have to wash your hands when you handle a baby. Also, after you change the baby (obviously). So, lots of hand washing. And my skin around my knuckles is getting ultra dry. So dry that there's been little cracks that bled a tiny bit. The problem is that I don't ever think about putting on lotion until it gets to this point. It's also tough because who knows when the baby is going to dook next and then you have to wash the lotion off anyway because you're washing your hands. And I just put on lotion, so I don't want to have to put it on again...

Mistake of the week: Not taking pictures of Caty in her Halloween outfit before she outgrew it.

Countdown to doomsday

Wow.
It's just barely over 2 weeks before our baby's due date!! Holy moly!

Preparations:

Get the car seat in the car
Figure out how to strap in a car seat (they have always seemed insanely complicated to me for some reason)
Figure out the baby's name
Pack an overnight bag
Take some classes

And so on...

So, there's still a lot to do. We're not freaking out too much right now, probably because we still aren't fully comprehending the full weight of what is about to happen. Not that the baby will be a bad thing! We are totally stoked, but I just don't think there is any way to prepare for the crazy journey we are about to embark on.

Stuff!!
Baby shower was today! It was a girls-only event this time and now I'm at work, so I don't know everything that we got for the baby. I'll send out some thanks in the next post.
Thank goodness for Heather (Julie's sister) letting us use a bunch of stuff that she had from her baby! We're all set for a crib and some other furniture, but I still don't know where the stroller is coming from. No big deal because that's something that will be easy to take care of. I hope.

Attempting to use as much healthy/natural things as possible.
Julie has been doing a lot of research on toxins in products we use everyday, like shampoos and soaps and things like that. Also, we're really getting into trying to eat as much 'natural' stuff as possible. When you start to really look at food and product labels, there are tons of things to look for that can be bad for you besides the easy to notice things like sugars and fats. We're going to try using cloth diapers, so I'll let everybody know how that goes. I suppose it is sort of a tie with regular diapers as to the environmental impact, but maybe I'll have to do more research on that. We're hoping it could save us money in the long run, and these suckers are one size fits all, I'm pretty sure. Except for the newborn ones. But we got plenty of diaper backups from the ones our nephew Jackson outgrew! Pa-pow. Thanks Jackson. And Nels and Jen.

2 weeks and 2 days left....

Best lightning show ever

This happened about 2 weeks ago and it was totally amazing.
I can say that the crazy lightning storm show was crazy awesome because it didn't start any destructive fires (that I know of) and it only struck a few people who were stupidly outside anyway. I mean seriously, who goes outside when there's THAT much lightning? Sure, the chances of actually getting STRUCK by lightning is way less than successfully navigating an asteroid field (3720 to 1), but why would you want to up the percentage? It's possible that you could just be seeking refuge, or be in the wrong place at the wrong time and get unlucky and get struck. Seriously though, if you would have seen just how many times lightning was striking, there's no way you would think it's a good idea to go outside when the storm was passing overhead. Seriously.
Our apartment sits on a hill that overlooks the town we live in to the south. It provides a really great view of our area when the skies are clear. When the clouds rolled in and the lightning started to flash, it was pretty cool to look outside our big living room window to check it out. As the storm rolled in closer, the flashes became more and more frequent. There was TONS of cloud to cloud lightning and plenty of big bolts that looked like they were hitting the ground. I've seen some fierce lightning storms in Montana but the sheer amount of lightning we were seeing was CRAZY. You didn't even have to wait but 5-15 seconds to see more. What was weird at this point was that we didn't hear any thunder.
It was dark, but I really should have brought out the video camera, it really was that amazing.
Soon enough the main event was right over the town and starting to go over our apartment. While we were watching, we saw lightning actually strike things THREE different times. I've seen lightning hit the ground before, but never actually saw it strike something. The first time it was the sign of a business and a large shower of sparks sprayed out. The surrounding area promptly went dark. Later we saw the lightning hit the ground again and then hit a lightpole, throwing more sparks in the air. It was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen. An amazing view of the valley, a huge bolt of lightning, seeing it hit a lightpole, KABAM! a shower of sparks flying in the air, and then half the town going dark instantly.
Lightning storms are awesome when you get to watch them. Just don't go outside during the show!

Expo of the week: Green Baby Expo.

Ideas for a movie (not really)

The word 'steep' is much more fun when used in the context of tea.

I like how the word fiery is spelled.

List shows never come close to matching up with what I think about whatever subject they're covering.  Also, most of the people making comments on the shows are complete douchebags ESPECIALLY on VH1.  Or maybe it's just the clips that are edited for the show.  Whatever it is, I hate VH1.

Someone needs to make chips that are healthy for you while still being delicious.

You HAVE to try these chocolate tortilla chips.  Seriously.  They are amazing.  They're just like normal tortilla chips... crunch, chomp chomp chomp, yum yum yum... wait a second...  chocolate aftertaste!  Still grossed out?  Well, you're wrong.

You know what?  We didn't need that xbox 360 that was on sale during Circuit City's liquidation closing. 

But we should have gone to that furniture store when they were going out of business.

TMNT.

If you asked me what I'd be doing five years from now, five years ago, I'm not sure if I would have immediately answered 'having a baby.'

I am STOKED to be having a baby with my awesome wife.

Spell check suggestions that come up when you spell my last name:

Tooter

Cooker

Hooker

Booker

Token

Stoker

Toner

Toper

East V. West

FOOD

East:  Go out for lunch everyday at work.  Get lots of takeout at home.  (Papa John's online ordering is AMAZING)  So is that place that way down on 116th st that had all of those delicious drinks.  If we didn't find that loose insert that had all the drinks on it, ordering from there or one of the closer chinese places was a toss-up, but once we had that drink slip, dinner was going to be awesome.  Gourmet chips!!  I had a running taste test on basically any and every bag of gourmet chips that I could find.  Or it didn't even have to be fancy just as long as I haven't tried it yet.  Results:  Cape Cod lightly salted potato chips offered the perfect crunch and saltiness; FoodShouldTasteGood's previously mentioned chocolate tortilla chips wins the novelty award; and probably tons of other good chips that I forgot about by now.   

The bad news of my food eating habits out in NYC was that I was definitely starting to gain a bit of weight.  The good news of living out on the east coast was that there were a bajillion awesome places to eat...     actually that's probably a good idea for a whole separate blog!  Moving on...

West:  Cooking.  Julie works hard teaching high schoolers and she gets mega tired at night.  It's up to Nate to make some delicious meals!  Basically there is ZERO takeout.  We never order anything for delivery because: One, you're going to have to pay for it, and no establishment is right around the block; Two, if we're going to eat out we're either eating at the place or taking it home in the car.  The good news of less take out and splurging on whatever gourmet candy or fattening crap I got from the corner deli is that I'm probably a bit healthier.  Also, not wasting tons of dough on food all the time, being pissed off at poker and ordering Papa John's on the internet because I'm too lazy to cook something.  Also, with roommates, the kitchen was perpetually dirty.  Now that I have control over this area, the place is usually clean for me to work my magic.  Tomorrow it's some ice cream (thanks to Hass for the maker), cookies, and pizza from scratch.  

Question I couldn't immediately answer of the week:  What's the coolest thing you've ever done in Montana? (Lee asking me during a conversation about MT)

Answer to the question after thinking about it of the week:  Battlesledding.

The Issues

Why is everyone so down on OJ?  Not the person, the juice.  Orange Juice gets all this negative press, but the fact is that it's crazy delicious.  You see all these ads like:  'Orange juice is high in sugar.  Drink Vitamin Water.'  Or stories on the news websites about health saying things like:  'Juice is too high in sugar and you don't get enough nutrients or vitamins or whatever so eat real fruit'  And I'm not saying real fruit is bad, I love real fruit.  Just stay the eff away from my orange juice!  It's delicious and you know it!  Damn orange juice haters. 

One of the worst realizations I've had in the past few years is that Vitamin Water is actually really no better for you than Kool-Aid.  I thought I had finally found a good alternative to sugary Kool-Aid, but alas...   Seriously, it tastes way too delicious to not be good.  Maybe that's the problem.  Maybe everything that tastes good is not good for you.  THAT is the worst realization. 

Why do so many things that I like have salt in them?  I mean, lots of salt.  Refried beans, pasta sauces, the list goes on and on.  You look at these things and the sodium content is like 30% of your daily value and there's about 5 1/2 servings in the tiny can.  You gotta be kidding me.  We stocked up on some cheap Campbell's soup at the grocery store and those suckers have loads of sodium. 

The key is to not buy anything unless it's on sale.   Here are some tips:  don't get tomatoes unless they're .99 a pound or less.  And if it's summer and you're in CA, definitely plant some and don't buy any at all.  And don't get cereal unless it's $2.00 or less for the small to medium sized boxes or $3 for the big time ones.  

And those are the issues for the week.

Poker aggravation of the week:  other player's flush draws.

Randomness

-written by Nate-

First, a few notes...

1. I think the comparison of living on each coast will probably extend past just two parts. There's lots of things I notice and sometimes I don't want to sit down and write about it and try and make it funny. So hopefully I'll be able to get a regular weekly entry thing going on without being hung up on trying to write awesome stuff all the time.

2. Stay tuned for pictures coming to the blog!! I think I'm going to attach some pictures to the previous entries to spice 'em up a bit.

3. I think I feel like I need to write a decently sized article every time I do a blog entry. And basically that is why I barely write on this. I feel like I need a good amount of material. From now on I'm going to just write whatever, however long it may be.


On with the action...

Don't you hate it when you're trying to explain something that you think you know enough about to explain and then someone else jumps in on your explanation and does a much worse job than you? And of course this person probably knows less about this subject or whatever you are trying to explain. Also, I'm pretty sure everybody figures they are better at explaining things they know about than someone else. Why do you have to start talking when I'm already explaining? I'm way more clear and concise, plus I know more about this than you.

On the other hand, when somebody else is explaining some topic you know a lot about and they're doing a bad job, don't you feel like you need to step in and fix their explanation? I hate when that happens. I have to totally tune out the conversation so I don't break the rule of jumping in on someone else's explanation. ... but they're doing such a bad job!!

You know what I hate? When you're frustrated or in a hurry and you drop something on the floor and bend down to try and pick it up, but you miss, and you've already started to lift yourself up, but now you have to bend down to pick it up again, and then you don't pick it up AGAIN, and now you're really pissed off.... yeah, I hate that.

Everybody should enter the Jeopardy.com Galopagos islands sweepstakes. All you have to do is watch Jeopardy for the final clue and just enter it for your chance to win! How flipping cool would it be to go to the Galopagos islands?? Freaking AWESOME.

I have written enough.

East v West 1 of 2

Recently I've been thinking about the fact that it's been about exactly a year since I made the move out to CA. If you would have asked me what my future plans were even a few months before I moved, I would have probably have just shrugged and said something about staying in New York and trying to get a better job. No real plans. Not worried too much about the future. Needless to say, things are extremely different that I could possibly have pictured during those days. And so it's time for me to take a look back and think about how life is (in my experience) on the west coast vs the east coast. More specifically, where I have lived on the east coast vs where I live now in California.


Mode of Transportation:


NYC: Subway
The good: reasonable cost, can catch up on some reading or just rest and listen to whatever on the ipod.
The bad: you are at the whims of weather, construction, and if you're out late at night, the wait and ride is going to take a while. Also, eff the E train.
CA: Car
The good: you can leave whenever you want, drive right up to where you're going, and the chances you have to sit next to someone who smells are greatly reduced.
The bad: insurance, gas, backing into poles outside of your carport, basically tons of money and maintenance. Oh, and traffic.


Overall, both have their good and bad points. The public transportation system in NYC is great, and makes it easy and cheap to get around, even if you sometimes have to wait for excruiatingly long periods of time for your train to come. Your own vehicle is equally amazing because you don't have to worry about waiting, it is ready to go when you are.


Okay, so I started this entry a couple of weeks ago, intending to finish it up with more hilarious observations about life on each coast, but then I completely blew off writing anymore. So, the plan is to make this one a two-parter.

Goings on in 09

It's a new year, everybody.
New things are happening.
During xmas break, I actually was hired by a hybrid television station! So that's pretty exciting. I get to operate camera during the live newscast, and do some light editing of video footage. The live-ness of it all makes it pretty fun because sometimes things don't work properly and you have to stay on your toes. ..and you might not get your shot set up properly until a few seconds before air. But that all makes it fun. The worst part about the job so far is that there is a 2 hour break between when I need to be there for the weekend newscasts. And since home is about 25 minutes away, it doesn't really make sense to drive home. The only good thing about this is that I get to watch some tv while I'm hanging out at the station. I get to check out wsop episodes on espn, or old high stakes poker shows. I also get to brush up on my trivia with lots of Jeopardy!.
I actually just took the online quiz to try and actually get on the show. Here's a tip: if you actually try this, you should probably practice a bit because it's INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT. Holy moly, there is NO WAY that I passed. I guess I'll have to wait until next time and brush up on my history and geography in the meantime!

Another amazing show that I started to watch during my breaks is Man v. Food. Seriously, it is crazy awesome. Basically, this guy just goes around to a ton of great places to eat and chows down on delicious comfort food. Then towards the end of the show he usually engages in some sort of eating challenge: like eating a 7lb hamburger (in one hour!! - he failed), or consuming the 'world's hottest curry,' or whatever gigantic portions you can think of. Basically for this guy to stay even slightly chubby and not grotesquely obese is to work out the whole time he's not on camera. Or purge. But seriously, with all of that awesome comfort food, you gotta be on some sort of workout plan. I guess the show makes it look like he eats all the time, but I'm sure it's laid out over several days and of course he only has to record so many episodes. But STILL. Anyway, I'm totally jealous of this dude. I mean, what an awesome job, right? Heck, I'd even like to be part of the crew or something. Basically it's an awesome show as you can tell from this whole huge paragraph of nothing that I have dedicated to it. I swear, it can make you hungry if you watch it, even if you just ate. It's that good. Check it out.

Besides poker and food shows, I just turn the tv to whatever sometimes just to have for background noise while I chow down my lunch. I'm actually glad that I don't get any channels on the tv at home, because it can be a HUGE time-waster. And besides, Julie and I have Netflix and we get movies all the time and use the 'watch instantly' feature all the time. So we definitely do not need any more media diversions in the house. Also, the Wii on a huge tv is super fun.

A little shout out to my brother-in-law, Chris, who bought a new huge LCD HD tv and gave Julie and I his old one. Zelda looks awesome on the big screen!

So I guess I should have labeled this entry 'all about television' cause that's really all I've been talking about. Oh well. Deal with it.

Best pickup line never used of the week: 'I'm partial to romaine.'