Driving home tonight I saw a Prius with a license plate that read “M1DW1FE.”

“Nice,” I thought. “A proud midwife. Midwives rock.”

Then I noticed a sticker on her window, designed like those damned Outer Banks “OBX” stickers. This one, though, said, “VBAC.”

“Huh,” thought I. “VBAC, eh? Kind of an odd thing to advertise on your car. But hey, midwives rock!”

I passed the car. A few minutes later, it passed me and I saw another sticker I’d missed the first time. This one, a pink one, read, “I SUPPORT PERINEUMS.”

At this point, I couldn’t help but think of some poor soul driving behind this car and seeing that bumper sticker for the first time. I suspect they went home wondering, “Perinuems? What are they and why was that car so in support of them… let me grab my dictionary… OK… Perennials… Prenatal… ah, here we go, Perineums. The area between a woman’s WHAT and HER WHAT?!!”

Yes. An odd bumper sticker, that is.

I know, I know, if I talk about the weather one more time, you’ll slap me (people that follow my twitter stream are probably most sick of it). But, hey, it’s raining, it’s cool outside, and there are leaves on the ground. Autumn is here. Finally.

After a dry, nasty summer, we didn’t get much relief. October was the hottest on record in the last 120+ years in this area and I lost count of the number of record highs we hit on individual days. Fall has always been my favorite season but it’s also the shortest, in a meteorological sense, even more so in Virginia than in Jersey. I’m just glad it looks like we may finally get a few weeks of decent fall weather in before the trees are completely bare.

Small talk, over.

The longer I wait to write a “what I’ve been up to entry,” the harder it seems to sum up that much time in one post. So, enough with the procrastination.

Summer Vacation Recap

We finished our summer off nicely with a trip up to North Wildwood, NJ for our summer vacation. We held off until the week after Labor Day in order to avoid crowds and pay a little less money. We stayed at a motel that used to be owned by a cashier from a grocery store we used to shop at when I was a kid (the Shop n Bag in Medford, a chain which was later bought out by Thriftway). She’s no longer the owner and the new owners charged us more than they originally quoted us (illegal, I’m sure, but I was too tired to fight about it), but it was still nice to be able to stay in one of the last old motels left on the island.

While the trip was nice, it was actually a little depressing. Last year, we didn’t make the trip to Wildwood because I wasn’t ready to deal with all of the emotional baggage that I still had packed. This year, though, I felt a little more prepared, two years after my grandmother’s death, to be able to handle the onslaught of memories. It was incredibly strange to drive past her house… we were there all the time as kids, up until 2005, and it just felt wrong to not park at 327 East 5th Avenue. Stace wrote up a great summation back in June. While it was difficult and I feel myself getting choked up thinking about it even now, it was nice to be back in Wildwood, enjoying the beach and boardwalk despite the many differences from my childhood.

We were curious about how Rasine would do at the beach. Other parents had told us to expect maybe an hour at the beach, max, since once a baby gets a single grain of sand in her eye, it’s all over. But Rasine surprised us. She played quietly and even took a nap, allowing us to spend a nice three hours down by the water. She wasn’t totally into the ocean, but warmed up to it a bit as the day went on.

While much of the boardwalk was closed, I did get a chance to meet “Mr. Fascination” Randy Senna in person for the first time. Talk about a guy with passion. It’s rare to come across someone who loves what they do for a living as much as he does. I should also note that Rasine won her first game ever of Fascination. Her great-grandmom would be proud.

One last thing to note about Wildwood: thanks to the Alumni Grill in Wildwood. They don’t take credit cards and I had locked myself out of my bank account (grrrrr), but they let us eat our food even though I was a few bucks short. I returned the next day and paid up the rest of my bill, which they insisted was unnecessary. Good veggie sandwiches, to boot.

The trip ended with a few more days up in Medford visiting with my family. We headed into Philly one day to the Please Touch Museum and had a good dinner at an all-vegan Chinese restaurant. Good stuff.

here’s the Flickr set from our trip.

Rasine’s Birthday

Rasine turned one last month. How insane is that?

And Monday night, she took nine steps. OMGWTFLOLZPLZTHX.

Movie Month

While I’m not watching as many movies as meg is for her Month of Madness, I’ve been enjoying an October filled with slasher movies (with one slight deviation last night when I got sucked into a Lifetime movie called 17 and Missing… you know me and Lifetime movies). I’m re-watching the entire Friday the 13th franchise, except for part six since I watched that earlier this year. It may end up being pure torture by the time I get to Jason X, but I’ve enjoyed the first two movies more than I rememebered.

BTW, I still freaking love Netflix and don’t regret leaving Greencine one bit. I do wish that they’d allow you to export/import your movie ratings, though. Flixster is all the rage, but no chance I’m manually rating movies in more than one place (er, two places).

Other Assorted Thoughts

I really need to write here more, and I’m going to try to.

As I tend to do every few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how best to organize my time. I’ve always got way too many projects going on and I’ve been honestly thinking about just cutting some stuff out (or cutting it way back). Urban Ambiance may be the next to go. I still love making music, but I hate running it as an official LLC (I’m just not cut out for the accounting and paperwork) and don’t like having that looming feeling that I should be getting more stuff out there even if I’m not in the mood. So, I’m going to finish off this next EP and see how I feel. I suspect I’ll close up shop afterwards and then just make music completely on my own schedule, as I feel like it with no obligations, real or imagined.

I’m also planning a week off from work sometime later this year in an attempt to focus solely on these many projects. I’ll take my eight hours and spend it primarily working on my book (it’s been two years since I started work on it and I’m not where I want to be with it yet, even though I have a publisher and a photographer!), but also spending some time working on web projects that have been aching for attention. I want to get back into a groove where I’m spending more time working on these things that I love and less time doing things that I don’t.

So, that’s that.