Tamaranai!

Here we are again... waiting at home for the little ladies to come!

Did you notice that I updated my layout? What do you think? I think it works better with photos and looks neat! ... if you disagree I'll change it back.

Anyway, it seems like Emma isn't drinking enough, her mouth is too small, so she isn't stimulating enough milk production, so, we are going to have to do formula and breast milk.
Today Emma had her first bath from her mom, I wish I was able to see it!!

Here are some more pics today!

baaaaaaaaaby!

I'm tired, so I don't wanna write!!

but.. I'm boiling with "cute"-bugs!!

Emma is so cute!! and tiny and ... well, visiting hours are too short!! It's killing me not to be able to she her at my leisure... I'm telling you, when she comes home.. I'm sorry honey, but I'm only giving her up when she needs to eat!! Today I walked around the neighborhood and got dinner at a Lawson's (making dinner while Rieko is eating wildly unflavored hospital food seems mean) I saw so many neighbors tonight and my tablet is almost flat dead out of batteries from showing Emma's pictures -- particularly her grey/blue eyes! If you know me, you know I'm a cool mother - 'shut yo' mouth' but Emma has  a soft spot, I hope I don't spoil her too much!!
I went to the hospital today and held Emma for almost 2 hours!! It's nowhere near enough! Today, under Rieko's advice and guidance, I also changed her diaper... this is the first of many! I don't mind... today the doggies punished me for leaving them so much... took 30minutes to get the house back to normal! Whatever Emma can do in her diaper can't compare what the two doggies can do in the house when they're feeling blue and have a little bit of diarrhea and full bladders. Thank you Muffy for helping to prepare me! Last night she woke me up almost every hour on the hour too! She's preparing me for the baby!

Can you believe it? I'm a father!... How'd that happen? -- Let's not go into the nitty gritty :p You've got google, go find out about the birds and the bees !! I can't wait to carry Emma in my arms and walk around with her!!

See you space cowboys!

OMG Babies!

*Warning* Today's post may have content that is shockingly cute and might tug at your heart strings. Also... there are going to be lots of pictures... you have been warned.

Here it is, the official Emma Grace Pike birth post!

She was born 7/28 - 2012 -- the same day as the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic games -- at 10:02 A.M. The doctors and nurses called me at 8:00am telling me to hurry to the hospital because labor had started, 2 hours later Emma was born at 2908 grams, her head circumference is 34.5cm and she is 47cm long. Rieko was in labor for a little over 4 hours, and delivered the baby without any complications. They'll be in the hospital for the next 5 days.

And.. as promised, PICTURES:

Baby!

Baby!

Labor

It has begun!

In the delivery room now.

Update number.. so tired.

↑my dinner (grilled chicken, fresh cucumber and.. well tortilla chips!) ...
↓Rieko's dinner .. she said it was a little better than lunch which was terrible:

So here's the plan gang... 6am, start the hormone drip to stimulate the contractions and labor... 9am.. see if it's working... then check and check and check and check... .. Thank you everyone for your prayers and keeping in touch with me!

Baby update 4

Here is a picture of the hospital food.
Rieko prefers airplane food... 

Water Break day 2

Just woke up after a fitful night sleeping at Rieko's mom's house. No news yet on when labour will start!
Rieko went into the hospital last night and is waiting for contractions to begin. Today she sent me a mail saying that one of the nurses told her the contractions usually start 24 hours after the water breaking so it's kind of a wait and see. I have my cellphone with me fully charged and not on vibrate mode so as soon as it begins she can contact me.
When Rieko uploads the picture, I'll attach her hospital food, apparently airplane food is better than hospital food.
I can visit between 3 and 7 pm so I'll be staying at home for the most part and coming back for visiting and if labour starts.
See you later space cowboys

*Edit at 11:25*
Apparently we've got an update from the doctor, if labor doesn't start today (24 hours-ish after her water broke) the doctor will try inducing it tomorrow -- if that doesn't work.. *snick* *snick* out comes the baby!

Water Break

Well... Rieko's water broke so she's in the hospital now awaiting contractions!

Not much longer now I think?

Baby Updates.

We had our regularly scheduled baby appointment today. Looks like she'll wait until her expectation date. - maybe 8/3? We have an appointment for next week to listen to her stomach to see how the baby is and another one for the week after... if it all fails looks like we'll be getting her pushed out after all on 8/12.

Right now we're waiting and seeing... it seems like some fluid came out... don't know if it's amniotic or not... waiting and seeing.

see you space cowboys

Cycling

After a while of not cycling, it was my first day in a while to make it all the way to work and back. ... I've found that runkeeper is acting weird... when I turn it on, it works nicely and tracks my data, sends me updates every kilometer etc, but, even though it updates me all the way to the finish, it doesn't really record to the finish... and.. I can't use my keyboard, send or receive mesages or anything... it pretty much nukes my phone and I have to reset it.. .. great right?
-.-
Well.. anyway.. I did 70km today, going to work I did 24km in the first hour, then 11km in the next 40 min -- curse you Tokyo traffic lights and traffic.

So.. since I burned (burnt?) so many calories, I tried out some new food from Family Mart. They're all new items in the convenience store and they were pretty good... with the exception of the pepsi... seriously.. pepsi makes some weird drinks -- I'm proud/ashamed to say that I've tried most of them:
PEPSI ICE CUCUMBER - 2007
PEPSI Blue Hawaii PINEAPPLE&LEMON - 2008
PEPSI WHITE PEPSI&YOGURT FLAVOR - 2008
PEPSI SHISO JAPANESE REFRESHING FLAVOR - 2009
PEPSI Azuki - 2009
pepsi BAOBAB REFRESHING COLA FLAVOR - 2010
pepsi Mont Blanc - 2010
pepsi CARIBBEAN GOLD WHITE SAPOTE FLAVOR - 2011
pepsi PINK strawberry and milk flavor - 2011
pepsi Salty Watermelon - 2012

Here's a shot of lunch with pepsi salty watermelon to wash it down:

Ok.. well.. it wasn't actually terrible.. but it wasn't great. The shrimp croquette sandwich was alright, the soup had a lemon I squeezed into it and it wasn't so great with lemon, but the fried chicken was good!

Work is so busy these days with the programming projects, and everything else, and now I have a new project to look over and maybe start a super long new programming project in addition to the regular daily stuff... YaY!
Oh by the way... I was thinking on the way home how to compare Java to Javascript... they're about as similar Ass is to Assassin (I couldn't think of any other comparisons) >.< but yeah.. they're drastically different!

Riding the bike today was a blessing since due to all the business I haven't really gotten as much exercise as I was thinking I'd do each week this month. Also, my guitar practice has fallen to the wayside...

Dinner was great tonight! Rieko makes a nice chunky beef stew :) No pictures though because my phone was in time-out.

see you space cowboys

Baby Bed

Shucks howdy!
I've been getting 1-10 views a day then I forget to post on Monday and... well so much for that!! I don't know if my ads ever appeared, I don't think they did, so I turned them off anyway!

We're in the final stretch! Tomorrow could be our last scheduled check-up before the baby comes, so I made the baby bed yesterday. Compared to building a chest of drawers from scratch, putting the baby bed together was a snap! I don't think it even took an hour, and I managed to use all the pieces and have none left over! how great is that?

Here are some pics of it:

Monday monday!

Oops! This is a late post for Monday.

So busy on Mondays, have to go to the office, do some work early, come home work some more.. My programming is coming along nicely.. I was running it with just html from php, but while it is fast, it's not flexible... today I'm trying to pull the data into a JSON object then play with it in JQUERY... hopefully it will be faster, but at least it will be more flexible.. here goes!

I was thinking about making a widget for the olympics, but with the baby on the way, when will that happen?!

in closing, have a nice pic!

Black blood of death...

 This coffee was made with a "special roast" and steeped in the refrigerator for about 36 hours... note the serious black color... I'd like to try it with a better brew because really... it tastes like punishment... like when you're a kid, you have a dare to drink the nastiest thing you can find... this is it :(

This is Lily after drinking it... note the painful contortions and spasms she's having... j/k she didn't drink it, but that's what I feel like after drinking it.

BぉGBぉgbぉg

The title says it all right?

Lately, I just can't settle down, agreed, work is getting more hectic, but, knowing that we're under 2 weeks until our baby is born just drives me crazy some nights!!! I'm a cool mother -- *shut your mouth* -- and don't really get worked up, and I especially have a difficult time telling the love of my life, so I thought I'd put some low grey shoe on it and drop some letters on it! Where are my low grey shoes? Well.. I left them somewhere in high school when I was studying for the S.A.T's .. (does the test have "."'s between each letter?  Is my punctuation correct? More importantly.. has anyone been checking!?!?!?!

I'm stuck in this programming dilemma... I just can't wrap my head around how to send it out.

anyway.. enjoy the matsuri while I figure it out:

It's Friday Friday

Let's see if I can find my "low-gray-shoes"-ness for today's post.

Rainy day today, but, at least it's cool out. In fact, I closed the window because it got so cold. It's the second day of summer, and it's so cool! I wish it could magically stay this way all summer but I doubt it. After Rieko's last cervix exam, there was some bleeding and we were worried, but everything is okay now!

We're looking forward to Emma being born! I didn't know anything about this superstition about not putting the baby crib/bed together early, but apparently it exists, so I've been putting off putting it together until maybe this weekend or next week. We're coming down into the last few weeks! It's going to happen so soon!!

 --- begin technical jibber jabber ----

Work - I've been stuck working on a project with php, mysql, jquery and csv files. Now that I have the SQL queries set, it's down to deciding on how I'll transfer the data to the client - the browser. I'm torn between being lazy, and just sending the data formatted as html from the server and just plunking that into the browser or being a little more elegant and sending the data encapsulated in a java object (JSON) and fiddle with the layout etc with jquery client side.

Tomorrow I'll work it out and see which is easier and more efficient or appropriate

--- end technical jibber jabber ---

So... I saw this nifty comic from C-A-D -- a gaming comic I like to read. Check out the link below:
http://v.cdn.cad-comic.com/comics/cad-20120720-8ae80.png

Go get them Mario!

And finally some kind of picture ...

WT-summer?

Wait... what happened to summer?

Today was super hot in the morning, then by evening, it was colder outside than in the A/C... what's going on?

Today is not much in the way of content, my stomach hurts, and I'm tired but not able to go to sleep right now... because my stomach hurts. Rieko and I did some SQL programming today, and right now we're watching soccer since we're not feeling sleepy yet. Japan is down 1-0 maybe they can make a comeback and win!!

Try-a-holic

Road the bike today yay! ... got a flat tire today... no! T.T  Here's the culprit:
I don't know what it is, but it was beautifully stuck in my tire, flush to the outside and straight in! If it weren't hollow maybe my tire would have kept pressure like a magic trick.

Ah well, at least I made it to work on time! Thanks to Rieko, she came and met me halfway on the way home with a bike bag -- Bikes can't go on the train without a bag, even if they aren't all the way in the bag -- so I could take my bike home.


Today I saw something called "Black Blood of the Earth".. it's a coffee concentrate drink brewed cold with some kind of vacuum extraction technique that apparently gives it enough concentrated caffeine that it could kill you if you drank 14 vials straight... or something like that... but really, this isn't Futurama, I don't think you'll be able to get that many down before you start feeling and seeing some serious side-effects! But I digress. I love me some coffee... I have a French Press, an Espresso machine, a hot dripper with timer and both a hand and electric grinder. I really want to get a vacuum brewer someday soon, you know the one, with a burner underneath and some kind of syphon which makes it look like some crazy science experiment. Now I want to try out some kind of vacuum brew.. but obviously I don't have any stuff like that on hand -.- oh well, maybe I can get an aeropress or something and get some kind of agitator machine... I'm thinking on a cheap solution I can get some kind of a vacuum bag and some kind of a vibrating thing, I'd really like one of those things that gently oscillates blood or a little magnetic thing that we used in chemistry that spins in a beaker.  ... Well, at the very least I'll probably pick up one of those nitrogen thingies that you use for making pressurized whipped cream and try it out! I really want to make my own black blood of the earth!

Tomorrow and Friday will be coding days ... yay -.-

On that note, let's look at my Reuben and we'll see you next time space cowboys.

Summer time is here

It's official (though I've thought it for weeks) rainy season is over, summer is here!! And it's shaping up to be a HOT one!! Maybe we shoulda gotten a better air-conditioner for our bedroom instead of getting something on a budget... And this just in! We now have to pay more money to the electric company! We now have to pay an extra fee for sustainable energy... kind of a management surcharge to cover their CEO's vacation ...err to cover the fees they spend hooking sustainable energy up to their power grid.. are you serious? ... Capitalism 101, hold your customer over a barrel and take him for all they have! I mean really, they get the sustainable energy cheap (because you can't operate on your own solar panels, you kinda have to pay for it -- and it doesn't work at night of course... )

Man.. I love Masterchef... if it weren't so hot, I think I'd do my own pressure test tomorrow... 6 eggs, make 1 3-egg omelet, a sunny-side up egg, a soft-boiled egg and a poached egg. Before I watched Masterchef, I had never cooked a poached egg, then I started poaching eggs for toppings for salads. Soft-boiled seems so easy.. how do you mess it up? put it in the water and set a timer!

So, an update on Rieko, tomorrow brings us down to about 2 weeks until Emma is fully developed, or 40 weeks. We read somewhere that more women go into labour (British spell-check!) on full moons and 8-2 is a perfectly full moon! Our expectancy day is 8-3!! But, to have labour on the weekend is an extra $400 so we're really hoping (and telling Emma) that she'll wait until Monday :p. Also... Rieko started lactating! Exciting no? The stars are aligning, we're getting ready for the baby!

Oh, and speaking of dairy products and salads and eggs, Rieko may be in the final weeks of pregnancy but she still cooks up some mean meals! I had a picture, but it didn't seem to save... So.. let's look at a lonely corgi waiting for a walk:

Holidays are over

Well
Thanks to my coworker, I had 3 straight days where I didn't once have to do any work, it was great!

We went to Costco over the weekend and got us some nice beef. I buy it in roast form to save some money then I break it down at home into some more manageable size chunks. Pictures are included. I wrapped some of the thick cuts in some bacon and grilled/roasted it at 300' - it was great!

Check it out:

At a loss.

It's hotter than sudden death sauce rubbed on your eyeball... makes it hard to thing of fun things to write about. Today we were hanging out with the neighbors and his little girl had a wipe out and busted her eye. Kids will be kids! They're still not back yet from going to visit a doctor to see if her eye is ok.

We spent most of the day today going to the photo studio to take pictures of Rieko's belly -- We got a free coupon for  photos, but apparently the coupon was only for the photo taking and a single print. Also, our digital data is held hostage for a year, then we can pay $5 to get them to burn it to a disc for us... YaY business! I understand they are trying to make money off us, but seriously... c'mon.. how can I email the prints or post them on my blog? We all know that's why I'm there! We're in the 21st century, who wants something as mundane as a paper print?? (plus even the smallest print costs a lot! ) If they gave me the CD I could go to 7-11 and print out enough for the whole neighbourhood <-- that's right! British spell-check! --  for the amount they want to charge for a print.

Tomorrow I'll take some pics (if I remember) as I cut down this roast I bought to make steaks! :) It's our little way to save money and also get thick cut steaks that we can't buy in the local supermarkets.

Lately I downloaded some comic book readers and comic-rack from the android market, Comic-book reader mobi is great... no.. terrific for the phone, but, Comic Rack is seriously good! on a tablet, each page comes in at about the same size as a pulp graphic novel, or you can turn it sideways and read half of the page at a time, zoomed in, and zoom out for for 2 page spreads.

 ... 19 more days.. can you believe it? Check out me trying to knock out some Morse Code to Emma (she didn't tap back surprisingly).

Look our hands are making a heart shape!!! <3 (Yes I'm wearing my black Vibrams)

More than meets the eye!

So tired today!

I swear Rieko is getting more and more energetic as the due date approaches. Today we were out and about walking all over the city for almost 6 hours! I did buy some more pants and sports shirts, they're so comfy and super cheap and they actually look pretty good!

Anyway, I thought I'd just give you some pics today of the fabled transformer I've been raving about:

Touchpad? Laptop? it's both! and it has a USB port :)

see you space cowboy.