Hello baby, goodbye sleep

Where have I been? How dare I disappear for so long without even leaving a note or having the common decency to give you a call to let you know I was ok? I know a mere apology won't suffice. I can however account for at least nine months of my absence to this:

Meet Virginia "Ginny" Noelle Gibbons, the newest member of our running crew. She joined the Gibbons gang on Dec. 27th 2011, take that Uncle Sam! She weighed in at a hefty 6lbs 10oz's. She's only been here for 6 days and already we like a lot of the same things, such as, eating, sleeping, pooping, and most importantly boobs.

Like in the wild Nancy's first instinct was to eat her young.

But after an hour of some pretty tense negotiations, we were able to talk her out of it.

For the two of you that read my blog, and the one of you two that cares, here's more or less how it all went down.

No matter how much I tried talking her out of it, at around 1am Dec 27th Nancy went into labor. At 4:00am the contractions were close enough together to warrent taking a ride to the hospital. It was pouring rain and the contractions were getting more abundant. I wanted to take a taxi and have the baby in the back seat, like on TV, that way we could save all that money on medical expenses. Nancy insisted I drive. I used the drive to the hospital to force Nancy into choosing a name for the baby, I knew that in her stressed state, she would be more likely to settle on one of the names on the very tiny list we had made that week. My hunch paid off and we had the named locked in before we got to the hospital. At 4:30am we arrived and checked into our labor/delivery room. We were going to try natural child birth, the way the Marquis De Sade intended, especially since the pain and frequency of the contractions made it seem like the baby was due any minute. We thought for sure we were at 7 to 8cm. (FYI, 10cm is what you need). Then the RN told us we were just at 2cm. After a couple more contractions, I can only assume were terrible, and an open dialog that involved a lot of crying and begging, mostly from me, we decided to administer the epidural.

I'd like to stop here for a second and send a personal thank you to Mr. Epidural for inventing the single most amazing procedure in all of mankind. Sure the wheel is OK and fire is great and all, but the epidural is without a doubt the most useful and impressive discovery in all of time itself. You people with kids know what I'm talkin' 'bout.

After the spine tap started to work it's magic, Nancy was her less intense self again, and we pretty much just hung out shooting the shit for the next 10 hours. Then at 4:30pm it was go time, 10cm dilated and ready to rock. The room came to life with nurses running around and doctors checking in. Each contraction was met with a chorus of chants and cheers to push, breath, and squeeze. I think at one point one of the nurses even had pom poms, a rainbow afro wig, and a sign that said "John 3:16".

After 2 hours of pushing and lots of stuff I can never un-see, our little bundle of joy made her triumphant entrance into the outside world. I got to cut the cord, which I guess means I'm a doctor now, right? We hung out with the baby for a little bit and were then moved to our recovery room. They keep you for 2 nights so I got to sleep on this:

It was like something out of of the Ikea rejected design files. I felt like I was sleeping in the front seat of a 1970's van. We found out the worst part about having a baby is eating the hospital food. It was slightly better than a high school cafeteria and a little worse than an all you can eat Sizzler's last week before the health inspector closes it down.

The baby did good on all her baby tests and they sent us on our way. They forgot to tell us what to do with her after we left the hospital, but we've seen all 4 seasons of Jon and Kate plus 8 so we should be fine. I'm picking out my Ed Hardy shirt tomorrow.

We were a little worried when they baby did this:

But after close inspection we couldn't find any numbers on her head. I guess she just likes to rock.

We are all home and doing just fine now. The baby wanted me to let you know that she is registered at Target and Walmart.

I'll try and pop in here from time to time with musings on fatherhood and other silly things. Thanks and sorry for the long hiatus.

THUMBS UP

Hi guy and gal. I entered a contest and now I need 150 thumbs up. That's where you come in. Please click HERE and watch my movie pitch, then give it a thumbs up.

Free hugs for everyone that does it.

Thanks.

Nick and Joe

A long time ago I had an idea to make a cop drama about two buddy cops. One day one of the cops is killed and his soul inhabits a coffee pot. This all stemmed from me noticing that if you press the lid open and shut on my coffee pot it was like a puppet.

Recently a friend of mine asked me to make a short film with a puppet theme and the coffee pot idea popped back into my consciousness. Now since I had the original idea years ago I have made The FNGR, The Evener, and Rob Boss' Death Stroke. I thought it best to step away from the gritty cop thing for a while. I ruminated more and more about what to do with this coffee pot idea and decided to take my first real run at a sit-com style show. I have a large aversion to roommate driven fodder, but this seemed different enough for me to change my views. I crapped out a script and got to work.

I asked my Dad's Garage improv buddies Rueben and Eve to lend their pretty little faces to the characters. I wanted an old school animated intro and song so I begged my friend Mike Geier to help me with the music while I doodled some terrible drawings. Please enjoy the fruits of my labor:

The Carpenters (not the band)

We've needed a bed in the guest bedroom/computer room for a while, but a futon was way to dirty hippie/college student and a full sized bed would've taken up way to much room. A Murphy bed would solve all our problems. After a little research we decided to try and build one ourselves.

We bought a kit off of Amazon for 250 bucks that came with the hardware, instructions, and a DVD. It was going to be a pretty involved project, but we were under the assumption that we were up for the task. At the last minute I had to work late the night we had decided to get the wood from Home Depot. We didn't make it there until 8:55pm. They close at 10pm. We had an hour to rent a truck, load it full of heavy wood, drive it home, unload it, and drive it back. We made it with 10 minutes to spare. Speed hauling should be the next Fast and the Furious plot line.

It took us three weekends to finish the damn thing. Murphy's Law is pretty bad, but it doesn't hold a candle to his bed. If your running out of things to argue with your wife about, might i suggest building a Murphy bed together.

Now we have a place for weary travelers to lay their heads when they stay with us. Please enjoy the video below, it's mainly for my parents, but you can watch it too, just keep in mind there are no fart jokes or off color humor, just bed building.

Dig It Baby

Sorry, long time no blog.

Work at the ol' toon factory has been relentless as of late. A lot of really cool stuff going on that I can't talk about. I've also been improvising at Dad's Garage a bunch. Not to mention that me and Nancy have been building a murphy bed for our guest/computer room at the house. Here is a bit of advice, don't ever build a murphy bed under and circumstances, ever. Although I have learned a valuable lesson, if you are running out of things to argue about, build a murphy bed.

We are almost done with it and I will be posting a video of the process soon for future generations to learn from.

I made a video of the dog again, she keeps digging crap up in the yard:

Faced Book

So I'm having one of those angry depressed moments in my life/career. I'm trying my damndest to get a show pilot bought. It's no secret, I started a facebook page a blog and told everyone I know about it. Toymageddon is the show if you haven't guessed by now.

Here's my dilemma. I have over 800 "friends" on the magical facebook. I have shared the Toymageddon facebook page several times and pleaded with people to "like" the page. It literally takes one click of the mouse button and does nothing else but sit on your page somewhere collecting dust. Of my 800 "friends", 60 have "liked" it. What the hell? That's a pretty shitty return.

I hate to sound like a baby, but I'm thinking of dumping all the "friends" that can't give me at least one click of the mouse. What are they all doing for me anyway? I'm not getting a bigger room in heaven because i have a bunch of "friends" on facebook. I hope not at least.

I know of the 60 "friends" that "liked" the Toymageddon page, only like 2 of you read my blog, but please let me know what you think I should do. Should I make one more enigmatic plea for acceptance then bring the hammer down or just not give a shit? Let me know what you think in the comments below. Love you.

This Video's Got Ballz!

It's been a while, mainly because we've actually been busy at work, but we finally made a fresh new facebook video for my office. Below is said video, please enjoy.

The FNGR bitch!

I have some terrible news friends. After a day of shooting and a day of editing, the latest chapter and complete retooling of the epic tale involving an alcoholic ex-astronaut who had his middle finger replaced by a talking bionic finger did not gain acceptance into the live screening of the coveted and highly esteemed Channel 101. It is with a heavy heart that I now share with you Dallas Houston's newest hobby, solving crimes in the evening, with the reboot of the beloved FNGR series entitled, The F.N.G.R.: Evenings.

Let me know in the comments section if you think the secret panel of Channel 101 judges was right or not. I promised myself I wouldn't cry...