J. Jason Lazarus Blog

After a three month hiatus due to excessive amounts of spam and a (crossing fingers and praying) let-up in the lag times with mysql queries, I’ve been able to reopen the forums.  Unfortunately, for new members they have to wait for me to approve their membership due to the torrent of porn-based postings I was getting from bot users.  For those that haven’t ever visited the forums or don’t know why I have them, I’ve always been interested in urban planning - especially locally here in Fairbanks.  Being a military brat for a good portion of my life, I was unable to watch any town that I lived in actually “grow” - sure, a few stores here and there, but when I moved to Fairbanks over, heck almost 12 years ago - comparatively, it was a tiny town.  Each summer building season seems to rival the last, bringing a relatively constant stream of new national and locally-based businesses.  It’s amazing to listen to the rumors, the gossip and the stories attached to what is happening around our town and once in a while, I end up being the “point” man for town development gossip.  Share what you know, spill the beans or just suck up the info - winter is usually our slow time, but this summer in Fairbanks should be Best Buy and The Gap opening up and who knows what else.  Our little gold rush town keeps on chuggin’ along. 

I’ll have to admit that I haven’t been too happy with sci-fi films in recent years.  Sci-fi has been beaten to a bloody pulp lately with several wonderful sci-fi series cancelled in recent years and the movies that major Hollywood studios have been releasing have been nothing but paltry attempts at rehashing.  In fact, you’d think I’d be happy with the recent influx (read: saturation) of horror movies and comic-book ripoffs, but what I’ve really needed for a while is a beautiful sci-fi film.  The only one that came close to it may have been the sci-fi romance The Fountain, but it left me confused at the end and wanting more - in fact the movie left behind its story to pursue beauty - two things that must go hand in hand.  Even though I say that, I’ll have to admit most sci-fi movies aren’t beautiful - in fact, they rarely rise above the cliche.  The last sci-fi that I saw that broke from tradition and did an overwelmingly good job at incorporating beauty, rousing story and exquisite dialogue was Firefly.  Since then, I haven’t seen any good sci-fi at all - and when you just consider just movies - well, I haven’t seen any good sci-fi in probably five years.

Sunshine changed all of that.  The story pits a small group of astronauts on a death-defying mission to save earth - something that we’ve seen time and time again.  What they do different is they make their struggle beautiful - like George Romero’s Zombie flicks of yore, Danny Boyle has brought back the emphasis of sci-fi back to the struggle of a small group of humans to rise above unsurmountable odds.  Going into it, I should’ve expected a wonderous job because of what Boyle did to the seemingly decaying Zombie genre in 28 Days.  Whats more, Boyle makes it one of the most visually stunning movies I’ve seen in years - and most of it has nothing to do with awe-inspiring gotta-see-it-in-HD explosions.  The storyline holds together till the bitter end and leaves you with a completely “full” feeling - that you’ve actually enjoyed the entire movie rather than only parts of it.  I urge all of you to see it.

After years of talking about it we’re actually house hunting right now - and we’re actually going to get into a house this summer. We’ve already looked at more than a half dozen and will have another half dozen seen by the end of the week - and we’ve already found several hopefuls. 2008 is shaping up to be one heck of an amazing year with new challenges and changes around each corner and I’m looking forward to even more significant changes that’ll be happening in our lives as Aidan gets bigger and we start living even more of the stereotypical “American Dream”. I’m heavily praying that all works out well and that we’re in a house by May 1st-15th so that I can use intersession time to move us in as the grandparents babysit a while during the day. Unfortunately, I have to admit that some of the hopefuls are in the Goldstream Valley. As much as I hate the prospect that I’d be forced to eat my own shoe, become one of the most prolific hypocrites around, the houses that we are looking at off of Sheep Creek Road are very appealing. We’ll see - tomorrow and the next day we’ll be looking at some more houses in town - hopefully I won’t have to deal with being so proximate to that… area.

Within the past few weeks we’ve been remaining pretty darn active - going out every day with little Aidan, whether its to appointments with the Realtor, out for shopping or eating or just out for the heck of it - we thankfully had Deanna’s parents come up the week after Aidan was born and that allowed us several dry runs at having him out in public and to see how much he’d fuss about it. Amazingly, now sitting at 16 days old, he hasn’t really fussed that much at all in public yet. At home it ends up being an hour a night where he fusses - usually between 9pm-1am. We’ve both been getting between 5-7 hours of sleep a night even with the 4-5 feedings a night - which has now gone down to about 2-3. We’re even getting him to stay up long enough now to cuddle and play with him. He’s such a cutie and a absolute pleasure and we’re loving being parents.

I am really, really looking forward to getting into a house. I’ve grown more and more frustrated whenever we hear anyone over our head moving about in the upper apartment and at this point in our life, I think it’s time that we have a place of our own. Cross your fingers or pray that we find our dream house soon!

For those of you attempting to call my cell phone, you’ve probably met some random error code - I’ve decided not to carry my number over to my new cell phone - a nice and shiny iPhone.  I was saying that I was going to wait for a 3G version of the phone, but I couldn’t hold out anymore.  Main reason was the severe lack of connection at the hospital during Aidan’s birth - I wanted to post things, check email without having to go home, deal with things at work without leaving Deanna and several times I was forced to - the iPhone would’ve saved me several inconvienances.  Thus, I have one now.  Call me at home to get my new cell number.

Aidan’s still doing dandy - sleeping at least in 3-4 hour shifts at night, being slightly fussy when we’re trying to put him down for the night and it might take an hour, but all is well other than that.   Even whe he’s fussy, it rarely lasts more than 30 minutes and usually is because he wants to be close to one of us.  We’re both getting about 5-8 hours of sleep per night, taking the advice of others and going to sleep early and waking up later (it’s spring break here).  I’ll be going back to work a bit next week, mostly full time, but I think Deanna’s ready to take on Aidan alone - we’ll be switching on May 1st - when she goes back to work and I start staying at home most of the day.  His jaundice has faded, he’s pooping and doing all other modes of baby business fine - he’s a pleasure of a child!

All is well in the Lazarus house - Aidan’s doing pretty good and we’re not running ragged yet :)   Nights are of coarse tough especially now that he wants to feed each two hours, but we’re doing a decent job of handing off duties.  Biggest weird one that I’m dealing with personally is that my dreams revolve exactly around what I do when I’m awake at night - so although I’m completely conscious for the diaper changing and the feedings, etc, I get a strange feeling I’ve already done this literally minutes ago - including slightly arguing with Deanna as to why she’s coming in and telling me that he needs to be changed - again - five minutes the last time - when in essence it’s been two hours at least!

I’m *really* enjoying being a dad.  It’s of coarse, trying, but I love every minute of it.  There’s those moments, but they are so fleeting!  It’s amazing how well you can deal with the lack of sleep if you realize why you’re doing all of it - and how, at least for me, the only times it becomes trying is when I don’t know how to help Aidan - but slowly we’re finding out what else he needs us to do when he whimpers or cries - and I think we’ll make wonderful parents yet

Anyways, here’s some new photos on the gallery - enjoy The gallery is being a bit fussy, but at least now my host, Ipower, is beginning to take the blame for their overloaded mysql servers.  Hopefully we’ll see a performance boost here sometime