Erin had a great 30 weeks of pregnancy, but it'll be getting harder going forward. Now that we're into the third trimester baby's kicking and punching regularly, and the weight and burden are growing. The fatigue that knocked Erin sideways in the first trimester is starting to come back a bit. It's not easy providing life support for somebody else in addition to yourself, and baby isn't getting any smaller.

That should not be construed as a complaint. Erin's been so upbeat throughout this experience, and it's gone so well so far that we'd have no qualms about having another child (which is the plan). We feel very fortunate, very blessed, by everything associated with this pregnancy. We'll be starting birthing classes next week, and we're looking forward to that, too.

Lately I've taken to playing "tap" with baby while Erin's asleep. Baby will poke my hand and I'll give baby a small push back. We can play tap for a several minutes at a time, and I just lay there awed by the notion that I'm already effectively sharing a moment alone with our child. About 9 more weeks until we can play the game face-to-face.

A TV alcove is a pretty cool thing. I saw a number of them along my Tour of Homes last summer because they're in a lot of the higher end homes nowadays. I was therefore delighted to have the opportunity to jet up to Battle Ground to assist Joe in putting one in over his natural gas fireplace. He'd already done a fair amount of prep work with the internal electrical and cable TV wiring, so that gave us a head start. After some conceptual discussions about all the odd angles we had to deal with, we built the frame of the alcove, mounted the various switches and outlets inside, and sheetrocked. That makes it sound a little easier than it was, because we spent a good 4-5 hours on it.

And I'm probably making it sound like I contributed more to this effort than I really did. I'm confident that my presence was helpful, and with a lot of the work it was very useful to have two sets of eyes and hands. But make no mistake: This is Joe's baby. He deserves the kudos.

By the end of the day we were able to move the TV and VCR into the alcove and to situate some furniture around the living room to take advantage of the new layout. Joe's got some finish work to do before the project can be called complete, but it's already clear that it's gonna be a winner. Building it was a heckuva good time, too.

Carol was home for dinner then off to her book club (this month's read: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold). We had an engaging talk about a variety of topics, but the thing I've been turning over is that when asked for book recommendations I didn't have nearly as many as I would've thought. Most of you already know I love M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and Further Along the Road Less Traveled. I'm also high one Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families. Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August (Non-fiction Pulitzer 1962) rocks. Ditto John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (Fiction Pulitzer 1981). When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner is excellent.

Given how much I read, I'm surprised that I don't have more that I like. I'm going to do some digging and see if I can come up with more recommendations. Maybe my standards are too high. Or maybe I'm getting forgetful in my old age. Surely there must be more works I like.

Dave came up from Eugene yesterday. We moved all the stuff out of the nursery and took a trip to Sears so I could buy a Craftsman ratchet and socket set with which to disassemble and reassemble the bunk bed. The bunk took a little bit of work. It's now back in one piece down in the family room. Dave slept on it last night, and since it didn't collapse on him, I think we can say that it's safe. Thanks for the testing, Dave!

Initially, Dave and I stopped work at 3 PM so that I could join Erin for her Week 30 doctor appointment. Everything is A-OK on the baby front. Kid's banging around like a drummer, heartbeat is normal at 136 BPM, and everything's looking good. Dr. Logan, the OB/GYN we saw last time as well, is very friendly, knowledgeable and (to the extent I can tell) competent. Dr. Bernard, who we'd seen in our first few visits and who we also liked, is unfortunately leaving Kaiser. We'll meet with another of the three remaining OB/GYNs next visit. As you'd think, we'd like to at least have met everyone of the doctors who might deliver our kid.

After Erin and I returned home, Dave and I set about demolishing the interior of the exterior wall in the nursery. We got most of it finished before running out to Lowe's and Sears to pick up a few supplies and then swinging by Papa John's to grab a couple pizzas for dinner. After dinner it was basically clean-up time and then off to bed.

Unfortunately, the oncoming illness Dave felt yesterday arrived full force this morning, so he was compelled to cancel the rest of the visit and head for home and more bed rest. There's something noble about a buddy who's willing to help out a friend until he's so falling over sick that he can't help any more. Or am I confusing "nobility" with "goofiness" again? Either way, my thanks to Dave and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

The University of Portland keeps emailing me alumni information and news. I'm not giving the school any money no matter what they send me—though a formal apology might be a start. (But how would it read? "Dear Mr. Davison, We're sorry we confused our publicly-stated Christian mission with training young men and women to kill people. Enclosed is a coupon good for $5 off at the school cafeteria.")

It's depressing and irritating that it's still so easy to find areas of blindness in the institution. For example, alumni have been invited to this spiffy on-campus lecture series called "Women of Substance." This incredibly pompous approach to language would be only mildly annoying if it weren't coupled with such a demeaning, disingenuous philosophy.

Why is this series not called "Substantive Women"? The first, most obvious reason is that "Women of Substance" sounds vaguely more prestigious to the untrained ear, which typically equates length with importance. I think I speak for most men when I say we'd appreciate it if women never equated length with importance. Some will argue that the preposition is crucial because the lecturers are "women first" and "of substance second." I think that's ridiculous. This is the same bizarre approach to linguistics which gives us "people of color," a case in which one can at least claim that the phrase is necessary because "colored people" carries unfortunate historical baggage. No such contention can be made about the term "substantive women." The only thing "of substance" does is use two words when one would do.

That's the rather benign half of the political correctness problem. The more serious objection is the implication that all women aren't inherently substantive. As I'll get to, I believe that's exactly what UP is saying. First, though, is there another descriptor you can put in place of "women" and not reach the same sort of conclusion? Would UP hold a lecture series of substantive soccer players? Substantive military officers? Substantive astronauts? Substantive men? I don't think so, and that's because no other category of people (with the exception of minorities who face the same linguistic discrimination) need be called "substantive" for UP or anyone else to assume them so.

One common and I think inadequate response is that just because these speakers are highlighted as substantive (though, for God's sake, one of the first of them is a feng shui expert*), it doesn't mean that every woman in the audience isn't just as substantive in her own right. Indeed, it doesn't mean that every woman in the world isn't substantive. Except of course that if everybody's substantive than substance becomes a term without meaning. You'd like to think that's not what they intend.

Except that they do. UP can't say what they think directly without offending just about everybody, which is another reason why they resort to using more words when fewer would do: They want to obscure what they really mean. It's bad enough that "women of substance" is a wordy self-important title. What's worse is the mindset that spawns such titles. Otherwise why note at all that the speakers are women? Only when UP gets to the point where it can have an all-women lecture series, not tout that fact, and—please God—not condescendingly attach a phrase to it like "of substance" will the University and, dare I say, American Catholicism itself have a chance at the grace to which it theoretically aspires.

* Little known Ty Davison trivia: I dated this feng shui expert for a few weeks back in college. There are a great many tasteless jokes that could be made here about how she helped me enhance the beneficial flow of my Chi.

Yeah, OK, so I got tired of my web site looking awful in Apple's Safari web browser. I was going to wait until Safari left beta before mucking with my code, but I'm using Safari full-time, and frankly, I'd recommend it to anyone running Mac OS 10.2. That being the case, I've updated the external Cascading Style Sheet file so that even the Safari beta can display things OK. It's not perfect, but you just see if you don't find it much more readable. I know I do. As a bonus, I don't think I've messed up anything in Explorer in making the changes I have, so folks who prefer MSIE should notice no difference. Also, I think I've fixed the problem with drop caps. Anybody has major problems with Safari, let me know.

Joe and Carol paid us a visit yesterday, and we had a grand time as we always do. What great folks. We had initially planned to lunch at Amadeus Cafe, a local favorite of Erin's and mine, but they were inexplicably closed (and I know we've been there on a Saturday before—so don't ask me what's up with that). We had to settle for Los Dos Amigos, our favorite Mexican restaurant. Life is so hard.

The four of us talked kids, house remodeling, food, gardening, computers, jobs, education, retirement savings and a multitude of other topics. Always a good time. Joe took a quick look at the window removal/installation project that we'll be pushing forward with in a few weeks. No obvious deficiencies in our plan of attack. (Of course it helps that Dave is planning to help me move some stuff and demo the wall prior to the window stuff.)

Joe brought down his new 12" PowerBook, Chaos, and after a quick update to my Airport Base Station (it is configured to only allow specific machines onto the network), he was able to surf and check email from the wireless network without difficulty. As for the new machine, well, that is one sweet PowerBook. It's small, light, compact, and attractive. I will be very surprised if, with an entry price of $1800, Apple doesn't sell them by the tens of thousands.

Thanks to Joe and Carol for the great Saturday!

I've recently gotten religion about buying locally. I've long given a preferential eye to locally-made items, but Oregon's woeful economic times have provided an extra impetus and incentive for scouring the store shelves for local products. I'm not saying that I'm willing to accept inferior quality in goods or services when buying locally (George Morlan, I'm looking in your direction!), but all things being equal, my desire that dollars stay in Oregon tips the scale when choosing between roughly equal local or national brands. Now more than ever I'm in the hunt for good locally made stuff.

Two recent favorites based in Salem: Kettle Food's Kettle Chips and the Puentes Brothers' Don Pancho tortillas. Even if you're out of state or out of country, you may find that both these companies products are superior to what you're presently buying. I know I did. See what you think.

While I'm on the topic of food, one area where Erin and I have made great strides recently is in buying organic produce. We've gone organic on apples, carrots, celery, bananas, and spinach among other fruits and vegetables. Except for oranges, in every other case the organic produce tastes better in addition to being a lot better for us. (If anyone knows why organic oranges don't taste as good as non-organic, I'd love to know.)

All of this may be the next step beyond my effort to reduce our meat consumption. I'm not sure. After reading last year about the horror show that is the American beef industry, I've been trying to eat healthier. We've not cut out meat entirely, but we're almost wholly vegetarian at home. We may eat meat when we go out, which means roughly once every two weeks. We will never return to a restaurant that gives us food poisoning as part of the entree, because frankly, there's no way for us to tell whether the food handling tainted the dinner or the food itself was tainted from the source. Either way, given some 5,000 deaths annually in the United States from food poisoning, I'm inclined to give restaurants only one shot at trying to kill me.

In some senses, I believe that's what we're talking with organic produce as well. Regular produce is laden with pesticides which will kill bugs and increase crop yields. That these same toxins might be harmful to humans (particularly children) seems to matter very little to an industry bent on deriving the most money possible out of their crops. What does virtually every online medical encyclopedia suggest you do to protect yourself and your family from pesticides on fruits and vegetables?

Remove the outer leaves of leafy vegetables, and then rinse the vegetables. Peel hard-skinned produce, or rinse it with lots of warm water mixed with salt and lemon juice or vinegar. Alternatively, you may want to buy and serve organic produce. Growers do not use pesticides to produce organic fruits and vegetables.

I don't know about you, but I have never rinsed hard-skinned produce with warm water and lemon juice or vinegar. In fact, I'd never even heard about this as a cleaning method, but again maybe that's just me.

Over the years the Environmental Protection Agency has banned one pesticide after another from use on produce fields. To the best of my knowledge they've never said, "Thank God we got this off the market. It's terrible for people!" Instead, they've been coy, playing up how everything was safe before, but now it's even safer. Hopefully I'm not shattering anyone's illusions when I say that you should be deeply suspicious of the government or the industry's ability or willingness to protect you. As FoodNews.org points out, "...it's important to remember that the government said that highly toxic pesticides like DDT, chlordane, dursban and others were safe right up to the day the EPA banned them."

A typical non-organic garden salad containing only tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and lettuce has eight different types of pesticides. (Create your own salad at FoodNews.org's Interactive Garden Salad or Virtual Fruit Salad.) Some produce is so contaminated that you'd want to buy organic or not buy them at all. Some produce contains relatively low levels of pesticides even in non-organic form.

Erin and I aren't 100 percent organic yet on our produce purchases, but you can bet we're trying. You can also bet that I'm recommending you investigate organic fruits and vegetables as well.

We went marching to give peace a chance yesterday, joining another 1100 folks on a rather subdued winding parade through downtown Salem. (Favorite sign: "What is our oil doing under their sand?") Like the millions across the world who also gathered to protest President Bush's headlong rush to war, this demonstration will have no impact whatsoever, and that realization is my best guess as to why there seemed to be an undercurrent of hopelessness. The US Congress has already given the president all the authority he needs, and neither the UN nor worldwide protests will present a barrier to the siege of Baghdad.

By early March I expect the US will have launched an attack on Iraq. I have no doubt that we will win militarily, but it is a long-term disaster for the United States, and we will suffer significantly more casualties than the last Gulf war unless we decide to forgo urban fighting. Either way, we will undoubtedly kill thousands of innocent Iraqis, the same as we did last time. This will not endear us to those in Middle East any more than last time.

Since Iraq has nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden (administration attempts to link him to Saddam not withstanding) and since North Korea is firing up its nuclear reactors, it's fair to wonder what's going on here. There are much bigger threats than Iraq. I think it has to do with Saddam's attempt to assassinate Bush Sr. when he visited Kuwait back in 1993 or 1994. President Clinton bombed some Iraqi military sites in retaliation, but I don't think that was sufficient for Jr. I think he harbors a desire for revenge, and to him this thing with Saddam is personal. You'd like to think the leader of the free world was beyond such pettiness, but hey, this is Dubya we're talking about.

I wrote last month about my hesitation in re-living my collegiate protest years. I have nothing to add here except to say that it was, if anything, worse than anticipated. I am not in a happy fun place.

Nonetheless, a good distraction does wonders, so ye ol' Davison clan met this afternoon at Ma and Pa's, and we had a jolly time. Mom cooked up a great chicken dinner, and the gang toasted my big 3-4 (hey, same as the Steeler defense) in good humor. I even got all the candles out this time around and without launching spittle all over the cake, too. Bonus.

Baby was kicking around a bit here and there, and everybody got the chance to put their hand on Erin's tummy and be on the receiving end of a boot. (Actually, much to Erin's delight baby kicked me in the head a few days ago. She was so pleased that I'd swear she's got a checklist for this kind of thing.) Bret first felt the kid kick last week. This time he did not run away in a panic. Family is a great thing.

It's been six years now since I started Davison Online, and it's time (or perhaps past due) for a change. When I started this site back in 1997, nobody had heard of weblogs or blogging, and frankly, given non-technical nature many in my readership, it may be the case that most of you still haven't heard of these things. That's neither here nor there, as the point is that this site is changing, not whether a certain demographic is technologically unaware. Once you're sure you have no idea what I'm talking about, we can proceed.

OK then. Where was I? Change, right. Davison Online is going to be restructured. Firstly, I will absolutely get that front page re-done. I've tried several times and been unhappy with every result. Somehow, some way, I will get a front page I like. Second, several sections will be revamped, most notably Genealogy. I've acquired the site www.DavisonFamily.us, which we can all helpfully abbreviate as "dofus," and that will be going up in the next week or two. There will be some other section changes, but probably nothing major until I get some backend stuff sorted out. I'm looking at some static database publishing arrangement as an attempt to take content (text and graphics) and quickly reformat it using Cascading Style Sheets. We'll see how much time that takes. I've been working hard (or is it hardly working?) lately, so it might take a little longer to get everything put together.

Time for a nap.

I met my parents for breakfast, did a little computer work at their place, had lunch with Dave, spent an inordinate amount of time doing yard work, and then got swamped with SiteRev.com work that kept me up late. All in all, though, a very good day.

Those of you who know me well know of my profound feelings for rap music. That is, I profoundly hate it. It's a musical style with which I have no cultural or other affinity, and some of the sub-genres are utterly vile. Nonetheless, props to the rap group G. Love and Special Sauce for their Best of album. It's sort of rapped R&B, and while I wouldn't say that it's definite run-out-and-buy material, it's a heckuva lot less offensive than gangsta rap and it's mellow enough that it makes for groovy background music.

One CD definitely fitting into the run-out-and-buy category is David Gray's A New Day at Midnight. Plaintive, thoughtful, evocative, inspiring, listenable. Do yourself a favor and pick it up.

Erin came home Friday with a cold, and she's been hacking her way through the last couple of nights. We ran out and grabbed some cough syrup she could take (alcohol-free, in other words), and I suppose that's helped. She's not slept through the last couple of nights, though. Joe mentioned at one point that a lot of pregnant women get an upper respiratory infection and can't shake it because their immune system is depressed ('cause baby's on board). I'm afraid that may be happening here, but perhaps it's too early to tell.

It's been an incredibly busy week (as was last week). Most of that's SiteRev.com business, but there's plenty of other stuff in there as well. I've been trying to work out getting windows for the soon-to-be nursery and the family room downstairs. We were going to ship some up from California because Mark (Erin's brother-in-law) had a deal on some, but it turned out that be the time you added up all the packing and shipping costs, it was cheaper to just buy new ones locally. It was a good alternative to explore though, and props to both Mark and Bernard (who helped us research packing and freight companies).

We're in week 27 on the pregnancy. Erin took the standard diabetic pregnancy test on Tuesday evening. No results from the lab yet, but we expect everything's fine. Baby's big enough now that you can put two hands on Erin's belly and feel the kid kick all around. It's remarkably like holding the child in your hands, and, as I've said before (and will continue to say), it's just the coolest thing ever.

I finally found a compost bin for the yard. We'd been making do with a compost pile, an arrangement which seemed to be more of a dinner platter for local racoons and squirrels than anything else. The bin should signal to critters everywhere that the free lunch is over. If not, well, I guess I'll know that strapping the bin to the top of the car to get it here wasn't worth much more than the strange glances I got from other drivers and passersby. But I think it will work out.

I listened to and watched Colin Powell attempting to make a case for war with Iraq this morning and came away unpersuaded. I have a lot of respect for Powell and his judgment, but if you know anything about him, you know he's the good soldier. Normally, that's a great quality, but here it's a huge detriment. It could be that he believes fully in the arguments he presented to the UN this morning. Or it could be, as rumors have it, that he's forcefully opposed to the war but has saluted and said "yes sir" to Bush's determination that war's what's needed. Since I don't trust Bush's judgment whatsoever, not being able to tell what Powell really believes is a gigantic liability. There's simply not very many people in this administration who are trustworthy.

More specifically concerning the issues Powell raised, virtually none of them were new and in no instance was a compelling point made that the international community must act immediately. (Unlike, perhaps, the situation brewing in North Korea.) Saddam has biological weapons. We knew this. Even more, we know that he's used them to kill thousands. He did most of this prior to the Gulf War of 1991 when he was considered, ahem, our regional ally. He's undeniably not Mr. Sunshine. But biological agents aren't difficult to make. You can go down to a 7-11 and, assuming you have the chemistry knowledge, cook up a Slurpee cocktail that'll kill half of Phoenix. Now Saddam's got a more involved operation than this, no doubt, but none of this is either news or difficult to do.

The charges that Saddam's got a nuke program are far fetched. Even if the metal tubes are what Powell said they are—and experts disagree—there's the little problem of enriched uranium. That's gotta come from somewhere, otherwise your nuclear bombs are really just nuclear wanna-be bombs. There is no evidence—none whatsoever—that Iraq has enriched uranium (let alone weapons grade enriched uranium). Unlike North Korea, Iraq's nuclear weapons capability not only isn't in existence, it's barely a blip on the radar.

Finally, and most damning to Powell's case since it calls into question the veracity of everything else, the proposed linkage between Iraq and the Al-Qaida network is ludicrious. One Jordanian-born Al-Qaida guy who happened to receive medical treatment in Baghdad isn't proof, it's happenstance. Assuming they have anything to do with Al-Qaida at all, Iraq has a lot less to do with them than, say, Pakistan, and that country is currently considered a friend in the war on terror.

The one thought that kept bouncing in my head as Powell showed off our nifty satellite images of Iraq moving or dismantling weapons sites prior to UN inspectors' arrival was this: If we had these images, why didn't we give them to the UN while these violations were occurring so that the inspectors could go and intercept or discover the weaponry? The answer, of course, is that we didn't want the weapons to be discovered by the inspectors. Bush and his cronies want a war instead.