This blog is officially dead. Get a shovel and some lime.

A Tom Texter Moment

Jenn and I were decompressing before bed, flipping channels. I stopped on Sundance or Flix, a musicmentary or docusical, whatever, I knew the music. I listened, trying to place it. Suddenly, in my mind, I saw an attic in Reading. Not mine, the stairs came up in the middle. Red curatins, I think, though they were probably sheets.

I was watching the Pixies sing Surfer Rosa and other 'hits', and the images I saw were Tom's room, with LP's we'd driven to Lancaster or York to buy.

I wonder where Tom is these days...

Reilan at Five Weeks

She is quite the cute baby.

Nana and Cousin Jordan visited from Pennsylvania.

I burned $50 in steaks.

And we went to the Virginia Zoo.

A good, albeit tiring, week.

So much for plans.

You cannot plan a fishing trip more than an hour ahead of time. The Weather Gods predicted thunderstorms for today, but we decided to sally forth anyway. Paddles 6 1/2 miles into the wind only to find our camping spot was lower than expected. We did have a Plan B a little farther away that looked good. We saw a 6' fish jump clear out of the water from 1/2 mile away. That got us excited, but later deflated us whem it turned out to be a mammal. Other than that the only bite was probably a good-size shark that peeled of 60 yards of line before it cut the 80 lb leader. Decided it wasn't worth camping overnight with nothing biting, so headed in as the winds increased to 20 kts higher than predicted. The smoke from the fires in NC that Tridaddy mentioned found its way to the Eastern Shore. We then missed a turn , ran out of water to paddle in, back tracked, etc etc etc.

Basically, we paddled 20 miles to take a dump in a marsh.



Headed out again 7/6....

My Father's Day Gift

...is a weekend on the ESVA, fishing for tarpon from a kayak. It's a four-hour paddle from the launch. We're camping in the marsh, hopefully on a spit dry land. With luck, I'll try my hand at landing an 8ft, 200 lb fish from a kayak.

More details to follow...

My, oh my, how time flies.

On Wednesday, May 21st at 11:04 AM, Reilan Marie "Chicken" Seiders was born into this world. By chance, one of my fishing buddies, Darrell Hollifield, helped with the Cesarean (Darrell is a trained Surgical Assistant and didn't just wander in off the street). The delivery seemed about normal to me, but I was solely a spectator. With Jenn in the capable hands of a kayak fisherman, Chicken and I went off to the neonatal unit, where she weighed in at 8 lbs and 7 oz and measured 21 inches.

We then spent a relatively uneventful four days at Virginia Beach General, and quickly Chicken fell into a routine: Sleep. Eat. Poop. Repeat. Jenn's recovery proceeded well.

Now we're finally home, and her brothers are spending their first night with her:"What's Chicken doing now?" "Where's her winkie?" "What's she eat?" Dylan says her crying hurts his ears. There's a lot we all have to get used to.

So, nothing earth-shattering outside the miracle of birth, but perhaps it's worth reviving this tired old blog--now that I have something to write about. But...maybe a quick nap first.

What's In a Name?

**News Flash**

We're pregnant. Baby Girl due about 1JUN2008.

You would think that with 300 million letter combinations in the English language, we could find one that was soothing to both of our ears. No such luck. She refuses to name the child after a football stadium (Kenan, or now, at Amy's suggestion, maybe Kiernan). I refuse to name the child after a witch--OR Mr. Bean (Rowan).

This has been the cause of much consternation and even more eye-rolling. There are Rules:

1. Must be Irish-ish, but not so Irish that the spelling would confuse non-Irish.
2. Must end in an 'n'.
3. Must not be the name of any student who Jenn doesn't like.
4. Must not be the name of any student who she has had more than 2 of the same name...ever.
5. Must not be the name of any girl I have slept with.
6. Must not be the name of any girl I have spoken to.
7. Must not be the name of any girl I have ever looked at.

Lord help us...