¶ Cold and flu season: I thought for sure all that Purell would keep me protected. Wrong-o.

Apparently, I've deluded myself yet again. I figured for sure that a little anti-bacterial Purell on the hands multiple times every day would keep the cold and flu bugs from hitting me this year. No such luck even with the flu shot I received a few weeks ago. Jonah's cold lasted Monday through Wednesday, and I picked it up from him on Wednesday. He appears to be more or less done with it—the couple nights we had a humidifer going in his room helped mitigate the symptoms somewhat—and now it's my turn to deal with the running nose, watery eyes, and congested sinuses. If history is any guide, I may be done with it by Christmas (or not).

The cold has meant a tough week for Jonah. As I mentioned, we stuck a humidifer in his room which helped him breath easier, but he was up several times a night for a couple of days there. That's a pain for both Erin and me, but perhaps more so for me since Erin can readily settle herself back to sleep and for whatever reason I can't. Even with a two-hour mid-day nap yesterday, I'm exhausted today.

No major progress to report on the crawling front. Jonah can still pop himself up onto all fours and move backward. We expect him to decipher the forward movement riddle any day now, and despite my cold and general discomfort I'm still looking forward to it.

We had a most excellent Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' place on Thursday. We combined that with a birthday celebration for Bret since car trouble prevented him from making a planned Wednesday night appearance. We ate a great meal, watched Jonah be Jonah, and played some Uno. Good, good times.

¶ Jonah crawls!...backward: The little boy is so, so close to getting this right. When will my weight loss plan of chasing him around start?

Try as he might, Jonah can't quite grasp the concept of crawling forward yet. He's on all fours and in prime position, but his coordination is off and he ends up crawling backward (a feat also worthy of celebration even if it's not quite the answer we were looking for). It was cool that he got to practice a lot on Joe and Carol's padded carpet. Doing the old face plant there isn't nearly so bad as doing it on hardwoods.

After a rather rough night for Jonah—up at 2:20 AM and up at 4 AM—we went to Mass with Joe and Carol at Sacred Heart in Battle Ground this morning. Jonah contented himself with looking around at the people and the church interior. I've only held him through a couple Masses, but he's been delightful each time. (OK, there was a certain wedding at which he was finicky. That's ancient history.)

After Mass, Joe and I moved his still-under-construction greenhouse into position. Joe and Dennis worked on it yesterday while I watched Jonah (and U of O tromp OSU) from the house's warm and friendly confines. Already enough of the framework is up to see that Joe's going to have a very impressive structure come spring. Once again, count me among those impressed with Joe's building skills.

Our thanks to Joe and Carol for allowing us to share their weekend!

¶ MEROL Food Tasters' Club: Complete with secret handshake and decoder ring. Oh, and awesome Italian dinner, too.

Maria, Erin, and Carol (MEROL) seemed somewhat uncertain as to whether today's cooking get-together constituted the beginnings of a club or not. I had no similar hesistation in proclaiming Dennis, Joe and I the founding members of the MEROL Food Tasters' Club. Our mission? To eat with gusto the food MEROL cooks. Today's mission? Accomplished. (My push for weekly meetings was sadly rebuffed by MEROL themselves, but there is talk at least of making it a monthly or quarterly event.)

Italian served as the inaugural theme, so us food tasters had to content ourselves with pasta, chicken, sauces, breads, garlic, etc. I won't sport with anyone's intelligence by pretending I have a clue what I ate this evening, for I am neither cook nor connosseur. Heck, I probably couldn't spell it even if I knew. You'll just have to trust me when I say that the food was very good, and I'd happily eat it again. These MEROL cooks know their stuff.

On the drink side, I downed several delicious Italian sodas. I don't know the percentages, but it's ice, half-and-half, club soda, whipped cream, and grenadine (or other flavoring). Very good stuff—to the point where it tempts one to include the drink in a wide variety of non-Italian meals. I don't know if they actually drink these in Italy or not (Liz? Little help here?), but if they don't, they should.

Kudos to Maria, Erin, and Carol for the great dinner!

¶ The Two Towers on DVD: Super extended gob-stopper edition.

Short-form review: If you liked The Fellowship of the Ring, you'll like The Two Towers. I picked up the extended DVD version (43 new minutes on top of an already 3 hour running time) last night at Best Buy. The Two Towers DVD overwhelms the casual viewer with two supplementary "behind the scenes" and "making of" DVDs, but for those that love this stuff, nirvana is at hand. Director Peter Jackson is perhaps a little less faithful to Tolkien's trilogy than hardcore fans might prefer, but I think his movies are great just the same. Towers loses a little of the freshness that made Fellowship so enchanting, but the characters are the same and journey continues so what do you want? And the battle sequences thrill regardless of the rest of the movie. Good stuff.

For those who continue to wonder—and there are several if my email and phone messages are any indication—no, I have not yet seen Matrix: Revolutions. I do plan to see it in the theatre, Jonah permitting, and hope to do so in the next week or two. I will write about it when I do, so stay tuned.

¶ The fallacy of coercive power: This is also why most hierarchies fail. Top-down doesn't work.

It looks increasingly like the US will bail on Iraq in June, by which time I expect the US casualty count to top 10,000 as I predicted back in March. (The current casualty count is slightly above 9,000, just over 400 of which are deaths.) If I sounded more than a little upset in the posting about Veterans Day, it's because I am.

We are such compliant creatures, so easily cajoled, persuaded, or otherwise motivated to do things. Most of the time we never know why we do what we do. Given the current state of affairs, though, it has perhaps never been more important for citizens to think about the choices they make. I've railed at length about the efforts of this administration to suspend various civil liberties. I've prattled on about how the US food industry isn't unhappy trying to kill you, so long as they can sell you their products for a healthy profit along the way. (See The Meatrix, a Flash-based take-off for an entertaining summary. Thanks, Dave, for the link.) Indeed, I positively won't shut up about the things I see wrong in the world, and in this nation's militarism I see a mighty evil. We're either going to figure out how bad this is and start trying to fix it, or it will ultimately destroy us. But I, for one, don't plan to go quietly.

¶ The 11th hour: Hard to get thrilled about Veterans Day when the Commander-in-Chief is such a nincompoop.

Veterans Day in the middle of an illegal US invasion of a foreign country might seem like a tough sell, but you wouldn't know it to look at the American media. Except that they're forced to keep reporting the bad news that we're now losing more than a soldier a day, it's been pretty jingoistic coverage. That's less true of the newspapers since they don't have TV's ability to hype distortions or outright lies in the same fashion, but at this point I don't think I'll be satisfied until I see a New York Times banner headline that reads, "What the hell are we doing in Iraq?" splashed across the front page. The media has been terribly compliant in this whole thing, and if they're not going discharge the duties of the Fourth Estate, well, then thank God you've got an Internet where backward yokels like yours truly can spout off and call a spade a spade.

I appreciate the service of US military men and women. I have a lot of respect for people willing to lay down their lives to defend the United States. If my country were ever threatened with invasion, I'd fight to defend it with every means available to me (which is why it should come as no surprise that some Iraqis are willing to do the same). It's just that I lose a lot of that respect when soldiers go off on an unprovoked attack against a foreign nation. Wearing a uniform doesn't make you a hero, and I don't care who you are if you can't tell right from wrong, moral from immoral, legal from illegal. The Bush doctrine of "strike first, ask questions later" equates to World War III as soon as other nations start following it. It would, however, be a lot less effective if soldiers didn't salute blindly and march to war.

I predict that we will ultimately cut-and-run from Iraq just as we have from Afganistan. In both cases, our foes will reconstitute their forces, and the world will be a far more dangerous place than it was when we started (as it is already). It will remain such as long as our Commander-in-Chief is George Bush.

Erin, Jonah, Liz, and I went up to Portland this morning to help Bret move. Since he's moving between apartments in the same complex, we faced a limited ordeal. Hauling his sofa compared, I'm sure, with lugging a beached whale, but the four us managed to do it with a borrowed truck and Jonah's applause. Bret's new place is a 2BR (versus his old one bedroom) so that coupled with a six-month lease should keep us from having deal with the sofa again in the near future. Glad we could help out, though.

We lunched at Burgerville followed by a shopping trip to Babies R Us. Liz bought Jonah a rug for his room, something I probably wouldn't bring up normally except that it has that same blue/white/gold plus stars/clouds/moon theme going and so perfectly compliments his nursery that it deserves mention. Thanks, Liz!

¶ Jonah in the dunk tank: No fuss, no muss. Good brunch. And poured water only. No dunk. Sweetness for the new boy!

Jonah received the Roman Catholic Sacrament of Baptism this afternoon in the font at Queen of Peace. Father George Wolf presided. Beside the obvious trio of Erin, Jonah, and me, attendees included three out of four of Jonah's grandparents (Ed, Carole, and Liz) and Jonah's godparents, Joe and Carol.

Although the possibility of unexpected behavior always lurks in any ceremony involving an infant, I am pleased to report that Jonah modeled civility and happiness, an attitude and a mood no doubt helped by the lengthy nap he took on my shoulder during the last half of the Mass that proceeded his baptism. (I don't care if he is only 18 lbs. That's one darned heavy boy when you have to hold him for 30 minutes—especially if you're trying to keep him immobile enough not to wake him.)

After the service, everyone came over for a celebratory brunch. We ate and watched Jonah do little Jonah things. I found particularly noteworthy Jonah's immense affection and longing for the red-topped syrup bottle, an act which played out before the assemblage to much mirth and merriment. It will take me a few days to get it sorted but expect to see images from the day in Jonah Gallery 14.

Our thanks to Father George, Liz, Ed, Carole, Joe and Carol for their love and support.

¶ To the Starrs and back: I love parties that go on and on, playing my favorite songs, and...and...twins!

First things first: We saw Matt, Ginger, and Laura in the hospital last night, and everybody's doing great. I held Laura for a while, and after lugging Jonah's almost 18 lbs. around, her 8 lbs. seemed just light as a feather. It's amazing how fast kids grow. Laura should be home from the hospital by the time you read this.

This evening we braved the rush hour traffic (commute time = 45 extra minutes) to party with the Starrs up in Portland. Erin's mom, Liz, is in town this weekend for Jonah's baptism, and though we never need an excuse to party it up, we sure will take it if we got it.

Adam and Nena's seven month-old twins, Lucy and Noor, provided a lot of entertainment. Not only can they crawl and sit up, they're also using coffee tables, and they like to pull themselves into a standing position. I don't know if it's just having a same-age sibling to compete with or what, but they're way ahead of the curve developmentally. Although as Adam quite rightly noted, it's not a race, I hope Jonah took notes nevertheless.

A lot of folks having been rather grimly warning me about how tough everything gets once Jonah can crawl and get into things. Maybe I'll change my tune, but I think Jonah's crawling about will be great fun. I'm really looking forward to him being able to scoot about under his own power. For me, enjoying each bit of progress and basking in every moment of a particular developmental stage is part of what makes parenthood the joy that it is. I've loved watching the changes so far, and I continue to look forward to what's ahead.

¶ Good news about kids: Jonah checks out OK and Laura Ellen Ogle enters the world.

Jonah's six-month Well Baby check out went flawlessly. He's 17 lbs. 10 oz. and 27.25" long. On the EPIC charts, that's roughly the 50 percentile for weigh and the 75th percentile for height. In other words, right where he needs to be. The Doc poked, prodded, and peered around and everything seems fine. Jonah had gone a few days without pooing, which had us a bit concerned, but the doctor said as long as he's still urinating and isn't in any discomfort, babies can go up to a week without defecating before there's cause for worry. (November 5 update: Three major poos in under an hour. Hurray!?) Jonah then got his six-month immunizations, which he bore well. I picked up a flu shot since they were available and free.

On top of all this good news, we received the happy word from Matt that Ginger gave birth this morning to a baby girl, Laura Ellen Ogle. Welcome to the world, little one, and congratulations to your parents!

¶ Bad news for the NFL: Despite a great time with Bret, I've probably seen my last live pro football game.

Bret and I drove up to Seattle yesterday to watch the Steelers play the Seahawks. We encountered snow flurries around Olympia, but temperatures were high 40s in Seattle. Weather was fine for a football game. (The game itself was another matter, a review of which you can read in Sports.)

Parking and traffic could be worse but not by much. Around the stadium traffic neared gridlock, and we barely moved for over an hour. Once we did get going, parking prices flabbergasted us: $25 for a spot within three blocks of the stadium. The lot cost dropped gradually as we moved away from the game location: $20, $15, $12, $10, $8...we parked maybe half a mile from the stadium for $6. We called our hoof to the stadium our "$19 walk."

I loved the time I spent with Bret—we get along famously and share the same goofy sense of humor—but the NFL experience left a lot to be desired. We encountered way too many Seahawk fans who were, to put it politely, jerks. It's not like the Steelers contingent (who were very well represented) are without morons of their own (there's me, for starters), but the Seahack faithful seemed particularly vile. (I attended a 49er game a few years back and encountered no such hostility or incivility from Niner fans. Perhaps it's the weather. Or the proximity of Microsoft.) Suffice it to say that a Seahawk game is in no way, shape, or form family friendly entertainment unless you're in a private suite or box seat. I heard comments from my $50 nosebleed seats that would make a sailor blush. (Whenever these individuals are asked to be a little less coarse in their commentary, they inevitably respond with something like "I paid fifty $#@! dollars for this seat, so I can say whatever the #!$@ I want!") This made my experience a little less Fan-tastic than the league would prefer, I'm sure.

Ultimately, a Seahawk football game—much a like a Trailblazer basketball game—represents a certain nadir in corporate advertising tie-ins and exposure. The game was presented by Home Depot implying, I guess, that their materials helped build the stadium or something. Every timeout seemingly featured a different sponsor until by the end it all became one big wash of sales pitches, none of which had anything to do with football barring the mutual desire of the NFL and their sponsors to make money. To say that they've oversold the game understates matters considerably. Given what they've done, it may not be possible to sell the game further.

The overall effect on me—a big fan of Steeler football—cannot be what the NFL would want to hear: I have no plans to ever again attend an NFL game. I'm not saying that I'll be turning down free Steeler tickets if they come my way, but the day's cost for gas, game, food, etc. ran about $200 for the two of us. Add to that an inexplicable lack of replays on the in-stadium Jumbotron, and sitting at home in the La-Z-Boy with a bag of popcorn and a Coke looks mighty appealing. Plus I can mute the commercials.