J. Jason Lazarus Blog

Saw the OB Doctor today and Deanna is apparently dialated almost 4 centimeters - she is having un-noticed contractions, but they aren’t hurting her at all yet.  Aside from the momentary tightness of the belly, there’s no real obvious sign of contractions and they seem to come and go with no pattern - so keep posted, might be within the next few days!

Being that it’s the due date, I suppose counting this as day “1″ isn’t that bad of an idea.  Saw the doctor yesterday - all is still well - the doctor was a bit concerned about the heart rate taking a drop as she was using a hand-monitor to rate it so she hooked Deanna up to the belly monitors for about 20 minutes - and all is fine.  The good news is that unbeknownst to Deanna, she was having contractions during the monitoring - which means that things are starting to move along.  Still means we might be sitting here for a week or two - or maybe only a day or two.  We’ll see what happens.  Here’s the Baby Heart Beat - Week 40.

Just thought I’d share last week’s baby heart beat - Week 39.  No changes on the baby horizon, we’ll see our OB doctor today and we’re crossing our fingers for some progression.  Deanna’s due tomorrow but that still allows two more weeks of safely waiting until we make any major decision - that is, if nothing changes.  We’ll see soon enough!

I’ve been saying for quite a while that I’m going to do these pictures of Deanna - and finally, last week, I got around to doing them. I used the on-campus studio for the work and even managed to use the flashpacks - and to be honest, I usually abhor flash in any form. I think I’ve managed to use it in an appropriate way and not overkill it. I wanted to do these pictures as gentle and as real as I could - so no body makeup to cover the usual marks of pregnancy, no real measure of makeup on Deanna short of a slight amount of foundation. In essence, this is what I see of my wife each day I look at her - a truly beautiful woman who is strong and resilient through this challenging time - yet gentle and loving when thoughts go to our child. As expected, Deanna kinda sorta likes the pictures - not really too much because, according to her, she had to be in them. But, I think they’re tastefully done and show the undying love of a soon-to-be mother. I haven’t worked portraiture at all in years at this point, but it is good to know that, at least in my mind, I can still take a decent portrait. Let me know what you think. The first one is taken with a lensbaby - a alternative style lens that allows you to skew the focal plane by only focusing areas of the entire picture rather than the whole frame. It isn’t a post-processing trick with a blur tool - no photoshopping here aside from the normal curves and levels adustments - some exposure change as well - maybe a bit burn&dodge. Both pictures were taken with my Canon Digital Rebel but I’ve got a ton of pictures taken by my 35mm’s and 120’s as well. We’ll see how those come out.

As for the baby, no update yet.

Fairbanks hasn’t been a happy place at this point for quite some time. The high temp within the last week has been a balmy -29F. The low point has been disputed between the Fairbanks International Airport and Fort Wainwright, less than 10 miles away - somewhere between -45 and -54. At this point I’m attempting to resist the urge to not plan a scheme on how to manage a 1 month old baby on a flight in the middle of March to Hawaii - and preferably have the three of us stay somewhere within the warming grasp of a volcano - right now, 85 degrees sounds like heaven. In fact, and this shows how bad it’s gotten: -29 in the middle of the day has literally, not sarcastically, seemed balmy. Man, I love Fairbanks but I hate this shit that it calls weather. What’s even worse is that the weather man (which if he’s not getting pelted with snowballs by now I don’t know whats wrong with my fellow citizens) has “forcasted” (and I use the term loosely) -10 to -20 for the past four days. No dice. Seriously, I’m pretty sure Sewage Tank Cleaner now ranks higher on the overall job market than Meteorologist.

Baby Update: No baby - yet. That’s pretty much the only news. Had another checkup at the doctor’s and all sounds good - heartrate is around 130 or so -babybeat38.mp3 So right now we’re in kinda a waiting stance; just waiting for labor to start. Deanna’s official due date is still two weeks away, but now we could safely have the baby at any time. To be honest, you have no idea how much of a relief it is that she’s reached full term. I know that we’re not out of the woods yet, but it’s one more hurdle we’ve gotten over. We’re practically ready for the baby - bought the car seat last night, already have most everything packed for the hospital and we’re planning to use the next two weeks just to relax and get ready for some restless nights

I’ve also been reading The Birth Partner as a guide to labor, hoping to figure out a bit more than what the classes we’ve taken, extensive as they may be, have taught us.  A friend of ours, Yavanna for those that know her, is aspiring to be a midwife and recommended this book highly - even buying us a copy and demanding that I read it.  I’ll have to say that I already do feel a bit more confident - knowing full well that as soon as the labor starts I’ll probably be scrambling for cohesion.

So, I do have to admit that I’ve been gaming quite a bit lately. With my work schedule being all kinds of messed up this semester, I’m usually not going in until at least 11 or Noon most days - leaving me without an excuse to go to bed early. Knowing full well that things will change as the baby comes around, I’ve been getting what I can in now. One of the many games that have been sucking away my time lately has been No More Heroes for the Wii - those not aquainted with Suda 51’s newest project might remember his work with Killer 7. Although this one was definitely made more westernized than its predecessor, it’s a much easier game to engage and has gotten me entranced lately. Take the goriest scene out of Kill Bill - the one they made B&W just to keep a R rating - and make it colorized and a video game - that’s *practically* what No More Heroes is.

I’ve also been addicted to Burnout Paradise for the Xbox 360 lately. Fondly referred to as “vroom-vroom” with a small select group of my friends, this franchise of a racing game has done everything right with its latest release - aside from getting rid of the extremely popular “Crash” mode. The online abilities are highly addictive and completing all the challenges has managed to force a permanent dent into my couch. Well worth the playtime.

So, I suppose I should drop the bomb - I broke down and got a Playstation 3.  I’ve been bugging Deanna for quite a while, pretty much only joking, that I wanted one and didn’t have one - then CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2008 happened - and Warner Brothers pulled out of the HD-DVD camp.  And there was a promotion to buy a Blu-ray player and get 5 free movies - and well, eventually, I’m going to want one anyways, because one day they might actually come up with a good game for the PS3 (read: Final Fantasy 13).  So, in the end, my true reasoning behind getting one wasn’t because I was lacking one of the current generation game systems - no - it was because I surmised that Blu-ray, due to Warner Brothers’ move to exclusivity with BD, means that they’ve won the format war, so a purchase, although unnessessary, seemed warranted.  I don’t plan to leave DVD behind anytime soon - I just think that I should enjoy my LCD HD TV with some of the more blockbuster-style movies.  Romantic movies and Comedies truly don’t need high-def - but blockbusters rarely have the pazazz they did on the big screen when brought home.  As for it being a game system as well?  It’s as cheap as a set-top system and does games too - I think I know where my allegiance is going to go.  In fact, I’ve bought only two games for it:  The Darkness and Resistance: Fall of Man.  I’ve already returned Resistance.  After playing epics like Bioshock and Gears of War, the paltry amount of detail and lackluster character renders seem cheap - especially for a game they’re still asking full price for.  Aside from Eye of Judgement, there are currently no games that I think my money will be touching for the PS3 - and just like before I had one, I’m still completely unimpressed by it as a gaming system.  Their online store is horrid and completely lacking content, their user interface and system preferences are paltry and unsatisfying at best.  If anyone “hurried” in letting their console out early, it was Sony.  As an informed owner, I can say that I’m still a proud part of Wii60 generation and ignore the existance of my PS3 - or should I start calling it my shapely Blu-ray player.

Aside from that, I’m still working on getting my gallery up and running on this new server.  I’m planning to take some time out of my days (I’m starting leave next week) and gear some stuff up on the site - make it a bit less clunky.  Thanks for bearing with me during this transition.