Tess is almost a month old. I'd say "time flies", but that has been well established already. Life hasn't changed as much as my imagination had predicted. Been great. Been funny. No real major lifestyle change. Important things are more important and unimportant things become less important. Add diapers (the odorlessness of it has been a pleasant surprise, but I understand that's temporary) some choppy sleep, and and that's pretty much my first month of fatherhood in a nutshell. Oh, and moments like this:

The phone rings. It's Nik. There's an urgency in her voice.

I never used to get calls like that. So that's different.

In the biz world, I don't think there's anybody who impresses me more than Steve Jobs. I remember back in 1996, when he was out of Apple and off doing his own thing, Apple foundered so badly that nobody was writing software for the Mac and all they were doing was putting out uninspired machines like the Performa, which was pretty much relegated to the print and graphic design market.

I remember in one of our series of incidentals at ye olde website twogoons.com, I wrote a silly line to rhyme with a line ending in "who cares" (or was it "prickly pears")...it went...something like "of Apple I shall buy no shares." Well, if only the contrarian in me had heard that.

$1,000 into Apple in 1995 would be worth about $23,000 today. And all because Steve Jobs came back to the company and saved it; he returned it to the #1 visionary in consumer electronics. Is there anybody better, faster, and more in tune with the culture of today and tomorrow? Nah.

All this noise about domestic wiretapping is, to me, ridiculous. First, they're not listening to you, unless you're making calls to So-and-so Al-such-and-such in Syria AND he's a suspected terrorist. And let's not pretend that we're really so concerned about the freedoms of folks who would make such calls. That's what many in the media and a few decidedly annoying celebrities are trying to sell us. Secondly, if you're not willing to sacrifice a little bit of freedom for security, then will your mind change after the next domestic terrorist attack, which is probably just a matter of time...? Things are different now, and it's surprising to me that so many people seem to forget that...or minimize it. How soon we forget. Ask an Israeli if they have a problem with the security methods employed by their country's intelligence agencies. You can't play this game with one hand tied behind your back.

That's not to say that I don't also think that Bush is a putz.

It's GREAT to see that Chewbacca has his own blog.

And hello Tess. Supernik delivered the goods. Hence this thingyless thingy. At the hospital, we sat around and waited for the inducement to begin. I ate a whole box of Cheezits. Cheezits are drugs. Keep them away from me. I finally beat Nik in a game of Gin. We talked about all the stuff you'd imagine we'd talk about. We asked a thousand rotating nurses a zillion questions.

Then came the Cervidil, and irregular contractions ensued. This made the baby's heart beat out of her wee chest. Four hours of tachycardia later, the docs decided to stop the contractions with some other medicine. This one made Nik shake from head to toe as if naked in Antarctica. Daddy-O was internally freaked but externally calm: my duty. Five minutes later the shaking stopped suddenly and completely, as if a switch had been turned off. Ah...

Then we waited on the cervix to do its thinning and dilation thing. After a while, the doc told Nik, "you're at 10", and the process began. First the epidural. Then the Pitocin. Then the pushing...about three hours of it. That epidural was a wise move. Whoo-ey. In the middle of the night, we could hear the woman in the next room screaming. Not just any screaming, mind you. This was chill-down-the-spine screaming, like you'd hear in the culminating moment of a bad horror flick. This wasn't tearing off your fingernails and dunking your hand in lemon juice screaming. This was legs first into a wood chipper screaming. Nik was about 50-50 on the epidural until the woman next door sealed the deal.

I won't Dooce this up with all the sanguinary details, but let's just say that Tess was stuck for a while and required a little Hooverage. Even that wasn't working. Our doctor (Dr. Sirgeon, if you can believe that) gave us an ultimatum. One last contraction, one final try. If that doesn't work, it's off to the C-section room. Nik gave me a look. It was tinged with fear, but the look said, "No frickin' way am I going to get all the way to this point and have it all count for nothing."

Then came the push of all pushes, Nik's finest moment. Tess went from just barely crowning to OUT in one moment. In the next moment she took her first breath—quite a thing to behold. I couldn't have known how powerful an experience that would be. Or how amazing it was to see the look of relief and happiness on Nik's face when she first heard her cry. I had read about these moments countless times, but I had never been particularly impressed or moved by others' depiction of this primal experience...just as you might not be as you read this. Just something that has to be lived, I suppose.

Coming home was great, but I had ignorantly assumed that babies sleep when you expect them to. Or more accurately, when you want them to. We quickly realized that Tess is nocturnal and she sleeps whenever she feels like it. Choppy ten-minute intermissions between wailing sessions. Feed me AGAIN! ZZZZZ AGAIN! ZZZZZ AGAIN! ZZZZZ AGAIN! How can she still be hungry?

There are many sentimental clichés out there about the joys of this parent stuff. They're all true.

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