More Adam pics + some playmat happy time video

here are some photos from Adam's August, in chronological order with accompanying increasing hair loss, plus a video - if you listen closely (or turn your computer speakers up loud enough), at the end he makes a definitive statement without saying a word.

over the last few weeks the little guy has really amped up his level of smiling, cooing, laughing, and happy squirming - he's getting nice and active with an appetite to match and Grace and I are enjoying every minute

Adam at 16 weeks

he's in the process of losing the hair with which he entered the outside world, time for him to buy that Power Wheels Corvette to soothe his ego

you have officially expired all of your Bueller goodwill

you know what? nuts to Ben Stein for being the first person i can recall meeting the celebrity threshold who is hawking "free" credit scores to the dumb public.



i saw his TV ad yesterday - just another in a long line of various companies purporting to give the consumer free copies of their credit scores and/or reports only to have them enrolled in one of those automatically deducted monthly fee programs for 'monitoring services' and such.

technically that's all fine and good by capitalistic standards - money exchanged for services, even if the exchange is set up on the sly - but where Stein should really feel shame is that he is perpetuating the trend of obscuring the fact that every citizen in the country is guaranteed by federal law to be given free copies of their credit reports (with no strings attached) once a year through annualcreditreport.com, the website set up by the three credit agencies to satisfy government legislation requirements.

FTC website FAQ on federally mandated free reports

sure i don't like those annoying freecreditreport.com musicians either for doing the same thing, but at least with them i get the feeling that they're motivated by desperate financial need - to me it's feasible that they are actually living out an existence in the same squalid conditions as depicted in their commercials.











if Ben Stein is doing it out of desperate financial need then he must as good with managing his money as your typical straight-out-of-high-school pro athlete. Mr. Stein, i say 'good day' to you sir!

Adam's Fun-Time Rolling Party

our little man did some serious physical feats of baby strength this weekend, executing the advanced-level back-to-tummy roll no fewer than six times in the space of ten minutes. you could hardly stop him

the crazy gentleman

there's a certain personality on the streets of downtown Houston of whom i've up to now only heard legend from one of my coworkers

however in returning today from an offsite lunch i was able to bear witness to the intriguingly puzzling situation

black guy, probably in his forties or fifties, well - dressed: fedora, matching ironed slacks, dress shirt, formal tie, polished shoes.

all the above + location of downtown Houston is a normal formula for modern businessman (well the fedora would be an anachronistic touch but i digress)

what makes the detour to crazytown is that he spends his time standing on the corner yelling angrily at the crosswalk signs.

what's more, apparently his ire is reserved solely for the "walk" stick figure; whenever the "don't walk" hand is visible he has nothing to say.

the concepts of 'well-groomed' and 'arguing with inanimate objects' are as incongruous as oil and water or toothpaste and orange juice.

it's so baffling and interesting that i felt compelled to stick around and listen to the details of his complaints against "WALK" guy. unfortunately midwestern sensibilities prevented me from openly gawking at the spectacle so the true nature of his beef will likely remain a mystery.