Ahoy me hearties. Welcome aboard the USS-Chuckler-dot-Org for today’s installment. The seas be rough, but noone is a braver captain that I, argghhh.

Ahem. Those of you who are frequently glued to my birthday calendar on the left will see that Glenn’s and my birthday is fast approaching. What is on offer for you, the consumer of birthday fun? So far, nothing. I’m still kinda tired from the trip, and not quite motivated to organize anything just yet. But I know, time is running out.

The decision is back: the funniest television of 2004 is “My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance” which started last night on 7. Watch it, for the love of god, watch it. It is hysterical.

A couple of new board games are in … Citadels, and Carcassonne. Citadels is a fairly simple game, and I dare say needs more than 2 people to play it, if our first run through was any indication. Carcassonne is fantastic. I can’t wait to have people round to play it. Leyton’s had a game already iirc, and he came second. Good stuff.

Oh, anyone who emailed me yesterday at work would’ve got a bounce message, as our server was broken and I had to fix it. It’s fine now (shiny new hard drive) so resend it if you could. Thanks.

Yo, I’m back y’all. It’s good to be back, but it wasn’t good getting back if you know what I’m saying. That’s a long, painful flight, truly.

This is my room at the Palliser:

This is me at the Ice Hockey:

This is the Calgary Flames warming up:

This is the LA Kings warming up:

This is an action shot during the game:

These are the Lifesize-Bobbleheads halftime entertainment:

So enjoy those pics for a moment. I’m at work today, so any goss that I missed out on that didn’t already make it to the Chuckler.org news, hit me up. Cheers.

Thanks for all your comments. I think we could handle some visitors on Sunday (daytime). Probably best to ring first to check, but it should be fine. Not sure how that works out for Dean….guess it depends on how bad his jetlag is….call to make other arrangements if you want, D. Oh yeah, please don’t worry about bringing flowers - we have heaps. If you insist on bringing something, food and/or drink is always good - then we can offer you food and drink without having to organise anything ourselves…clever, huh?

Not too much new happening here. A midwife came this morning and took some blood from Charlotte’s heel to run some standard tests - she didn’t even wake up, so I’m guessing it wasn’t too traumatic. Didn’t get quite so much sleep last night, but still pretty good considering she was only 3 days old last night…

Let’s get the facts and figures out of the way first.

Name: Charlotte Amelie Miller (we haven’t officially registered her yet, but it looks like the name is sticking)
Born: 2nd Feb 2004, 8:30pm
Weight at birth: 3.83Kg (8lb7oz)
Length at birth: 52.5cm (about 21 inches?)
Photo:

Now for the story. Well, as you’d all be aware, Lara was due on 24th January, and we were expecting Charlotte to ‘arrive’ early, so we were pretty frustrated(Lara especially, considering she was carrying Charlotte around) when Lara went past the due date…and then kept going. I started leave on the Australia Day Weekend and we saw a midwife on Tuesday 27th. She booked us in for a doctor’s examination on Friday 30th. Depending on how far along Lara was then (in terms of how far dilated the cervix was) they would either keep her in hospital then, or send us home to come back the following week.

We rocked up the hospital at about 11am on the Friday, with Lara’s packed bags in the car. A Dr Nick-style registrar (English not his first language, with a manner that didn’t inspire confidence) told Lara she was not even 2cm dilated, whereas she would have to be 3cm before they broke her waters. So, another midwife talked us through the induction process and talked us into being part of a trial where they are ‘testing’ (all the methods are safe, they are trying to work out which is least likely to lead to further intervention being required) different methods for getting the cervix to open. The standard is a gel, while the other options are little balloons they insert into the cervix inflated to a 3cm circumference which fall out when the cervix is dilated to 3cm. The balloons sounded better than the gel, and if we weren’t in the trial we’d have to have the gel, so we took a chance and ended up being allocated a balloon method (ATAD catheter) which was to be inserted at 4pm Monday 2 Feb.

We tried to have a normal weekend - although our power was out for a lot of it- hung out with Blacky on Friday night, went to Lara’s parents place Saturday (where she flogged us at Stock Exchange Monopoly - not sure if that means she likes it now) and dinner with friends on Sunday. 4am Monday morning Lara started getting some pretty serious contractions. Her parents came over, I watched the Superbowl (Lara spotted the Janet Jackson incident) and she kept getting regular (5 to 8 mins apart) contractions throughout the day.

At about 3pm, we called the hospital to let them know and they said to just came in as planned for the 4pm ATAD catheter. So they took us to a ‘delivery suite’ which was a massive room with a hospital bed, shower, toilet, Lay-Z-Boy, CD player etc (in a public hospital) where the contractions kept coming. By the time they had organised for both a doctor and a midwife to be in the room at the same time (about 6:30), so Lara could be examined, she was 4cm dilated and didn’t need the catheter. Then they broke her waters and Lara and I headed for the shower (I had brought my togs along) where the warm water helped take the edge off the contractions. At about 7:45 Lara was getting extremely fatigued from the contractions (they were less than 3 minutes apart and lasted for more than a minute each) so headed for the bed. She quickly found out lying down was more painful, so kneeled on the bed, leaning on me (standing next to the bed) to support her upper body. It soon became obvious this was it. The midwives were called and the next half hour or so was the actual birth - lots of pain (no drugs, mainly due to how quickly the whole thing happened), quite a bit of noise, and lots of encouragement from me, Lara’s Mum and the midwives. At 8:30 Charlotte was born and the midwives cut the cord and started cleaning up all the goop (ask me if you want to know more about that bit) before Lara or I really realised what had just happened. Kristian and Lara’s Dad came in shortly after and we took turns holding Charlotte and congratulating ourselves on the birth and the obvious beauty of our child. Oh yeah, surprisingly (considering my previous experiences) I didn’t feel faint or queasy at any time during the birth - didn’t even have time to worry about how things were going - so I guess I won that war.

Lara’s parents took Kristian home, while I stayed with Lara as she was settled in to the ward for the night. I went home about 11:30 and managed to get some sleep before heading back in Tuesday morning. We pretty much sat around all day waiting for visitors to arrive. This started at 5pm and didn’t stop until 8:30 - half an hour after visiting hours. They brought some cool gifts for Charlotte but surprisingly few flowers. When I went back in Wednesday, Lara was ready to come home - a hospital isn’t the easiest place to sleep in and Lara was confident we were ready to have Charlotte at home. The doctors were happy with both Charlotte and Lara’s progress since the birth, so we arrived home about 11:30am Wednesday. Things have been going well so far - Charlotte seems to have settled really well and we all got a lot of sleep last night - and everything seems to be going even better than we possibly expected. Hopefully it will continue in this way…..

Hey … just a real quick note, aight? Things here are going well, I just went to a meeting where people we so emotional about the use/non-use of our product that one guy left in a tantrum. Another guy was close to crying. Amazing stuff.

Tonight the gang is going out for beers at a place called James Joyce. Should be good.

Last night I saw Calgary’s Flames take on the LA Kings in the NHL (that’s Ice Hockey for the uninitiated). Was fantastic, and I splurged a bit and got $60 instead of the nosebleed sections for $25. Front section was still over $200, so I was restrained enough in my decision I think. Got some picks I’ll post next week.

I really must call Lisa before I leave. She called me on Sunday to say g’day but I’ve just been so busy and tired I haven’t returned the favour. Tut tut. I’m so rude. Maybe if she’s lucky she’ll get a drunken phone call from me this evening? “G’daaaaay Liiiiiiissha … owwwzit goin’?” /shudder

Well, they sure do eat a lot of soup here, eh, and then they wash it down with candy and pop. :crazy:

Hey everyone. It’s just before 4am here in Calgary, and thought I’d compose some notes on the whole situation with my trip.

So, trip from Brisbane to Los Angeles via Auckland was pretty uneventuful. Travelling with no luggage is pretty cool, you can breeze to the front of most customs lines which makes the trip far less stressy.

When I got to LA, I was asked by this really nice lady from Alaskan Air if I’d like to upgrade to First Class for US$50. Damn straight I would. This is the smartest thing I’ve seen an airline do … their First Class seats (Business Class to the Australians amongst us) weren’t all sold, so they offered cheap upgrades to pasengers to make a touch more money during the flight. Hello, Australian airlines? Can you hear that? :crazy:

I think that if I ever lived on this side of the pacific, I would need to immediately check into therapy to contol my love of pink lemondade. This stuff is the nectar of the gods. I relaxed at LA sipping one, and I couldn’t have been happier. Just before we left to Vancouver, the captain comes on with a message that made me chuckle: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. We’ve just noticed that we weren’t given enough fuel by the fuel tanker to complete this flight, so we’re going to have to sit tight and wait for them to come back. Sorry for the delay.”
Got to Vancouver, crappy airport. They charge you $10 to get into security if it’s your first flight of the day from a Canadian airport. “Airport Improvement Fee” it’s called. What a joke. In Vancouver, the plane was full, when we’re told that there’s been a security scare and we’d all need to go through security again. Not just our flight, though, every flight. Thousands of people. Took hours, so got to the hotel quite a bit later than expected. -20 degrees in Calgary when we landed. I smelt a bit like Bryce when he came back from Germany, but I needed to put a coat on. Ughhhh.

The hotel is a nice place, very charming. Now, Calgary. It’s a strange place - the streets are connected by above ground tunnels called the “plus 15″ which allow you to go from one block to another without going outside, more or less. I was in search of souveniers (everything is maple-based) and internet access to check my email on. I discovered that there was a place, but I needed to get out of the tunnels to get to it. When I finally found it, it was closed, and I couldn’t find my way back into the tunnels. Hurrah. I had a map, but a lot of tunnel entry points are through office buildings that are closed on weekends, so I pretty much tried every door I came across. I hope no burglaries are comitted in Calgary tonight, because my gloveprints will be on the door.
Eventually I found my way home, the internet access part of my mission being a complete failure. Superbowl was on today, so I sat at the hotel bar with cheap beers and tapas and watched that for a bit, until I realized that I didn’t really care who won and I had a good book upstairs that I could read from a comfortable bed. No contest. (In respect to the value that people on this side of the Pacific place on this game, I did turn it back on to watch the end.) That’s the second Superbowl I’ve seen from over here in three years. How about that?

Anyway, I wasn’t able to sleep as much as I would’ve liked that evening, so while reading the Hotel Guide I discovered that there was a T1-enabled PC at the hotel that I could use for a fraction of the price of an internet cafe. That’s the reason for this entry. Good day.