Baby Pool – Win a Free Book!
Baby pools are fun, right? Especially when they have prizes! So let's do one.
Aren't they pretty together?
Larissa is now in Week 38 of her pregnancy. We're just 14 days away from the April 3 due date! But when exactly is our baby going to arrive?
Think you can predict the future? If you can, you could win a free copy of my new book of short stories, DISCOVERY!
RULES
To play, leave your guess in a comment on this post. Include the following information: Date of Birth, Weight (pounds and ounces), Sex.
The winner will be the person who guesses, or is closest to, the correct date. Weight will be the first tiebreaker and Sex will be the second tiebreaker. If there is still a tie after that, I'll use a random number generator to select the winner.
I will mail a copy of DISCOVERY to the winner.
Happy guessing!
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be An Astronaut?
What if our baby grows up to be an astronaut?
Awesome. Seriously. Astronauts are so super cool. Our baby could be the first human to set foot on Mars! If reading science fiction novels has taught me anything, it's that colonizing Mars is a vital and inevitable "next step" for human development, and there's no possible complication or danger involved with pursuing that goal.
Er, right. Maybe that's not the case. I think I may be misremembering Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. Never mind.
I guess one downside to having an astronaut in the family--especially if they flew to Mars--would be that they would be gone for long stretches of time. That would be quite the sacrifice! I want to have my babies close to me all the time and forever. That's a viable plan, right?
Regardless of the downsides, having a child grow up to be an astronaut would be really great. Not only would it mean tons of boasting privileges, but it would also mean that NASA got its act together and started being cool again. The fact that they aren't doing any more manned space flights makes me sad...
If you were an astronaut, where would you most want to travel to?
All Moved In, With Three Weeks To Go
Life has been moving along at a pretty rapid pace over the past several weeks. I thought I'd take the opportunity to share a brief update.
Two weeks ago Larissa and I moved into a new two-bedroom suite in one of Victoria's suburbs. We have at least three times as much floor space here, and we love it!
In addition to going from a single bedroom to two bedrooms, we also now have a separate kitchen and living room, a small dining room, and an office for me to work in.
Getting out of downtown has been nice for a lot of different reasons. For one, there's no street noise outside when we're trying to go to sleep. Larissa used to wake up sometimes from all the cars streaming past after the bars closed. Another benefit is that it's so much nicer to go for walks in and around all the little suburbs and winding streets. We're only a 15-minute walk away from the beach, too.
We took advantage of all the extra space this weekend to have a bunch of friends over for a combined board game night and DISCOVERY prerelease party. (Sneaky little writing update: I sent in the order for the first print run of DISCOVERY on Saturday. I should be able to start sending out people's orders by the end of the month.)
Of course, the main reason we moved was so that we would have space for Baby. It's only three weeks until Larissa's due date! We went on a hospital tour last week and got to see the facilities where Baby will be welcomed into the world. It made a few things seem a lot more "real" for me. I'm getting so excited for that day to come.
I've been telling Larissa that one of the things I'm really looking forward to is sitting on the couch holding Baby while I'm watching playoff hockey later in April. Gotta get the kid started on the right foot, eh? Go Canucks go!
Our Babymoon in Ucluelet
Two weekends ago Larissa and I went on what she called a "babymoon," a term I hadn't heard before. Apparently it's a "thing," though. It was our last little trip together as just the two of us before Baby arrives about six weeks from now.
At her work Christmas party, Larissa won a two-night stay to the Black Rock Resort in Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. It's beautiful out there! We drove up on Saturday after Larissa got off work, spent Saturday night, all day Sunday, and Monday morning, and drove back down to Victoria on Monday afternoon.
It rained all day Sunday, which isn't unusual on the Island, especially further north. It's rain forest country, after all! Not the kind of jungle rain forest you typically associate with the Amazon, but rain forest nonetheless. So we spent the day mostly in our room, relaxing and hanging out together. We did venture down to the main floor in the late morning for the special Valentine's weekend brunch, and it was awesome. The bacon was particularly good.
During the rest of the day Larissa finished crocheting a baby blanket and I watched some sports. It was good to just get away and not have to worry about anything.
On Monday morning the sun was out, so we took a bit of a walk on the beach. I even convinced her to give me a smooch on the cheek!
We didn't take a lot of pictures, but I've included a few below.
We've had our time away now, and we're in the home stretch to Baby's arrival! We're moving into our new place this weekend, so Larissa can get down to some serious nesting. Once our move is done, there won't be any more big items on our Pre-Baby To-Do List, so we're looking forward to having that out of the way. Maybe once we're moved in I'll do a photo tour, or a brief video showing the place off. Depends what I have time for. These stories don't write themselves!
What If Our Baby Grows Up To Be Prime Minister?
Personally, I find politics very frustrating and unappealing. Don't get me wrong: I think politicians are important people, and we need to have good people out there who aspire to be great politicians. For myself, though, I find the partisanship, hostility, and negative campaigning tactics really exhausting.
But if our baby decides to go into politics, then I'm going to do everything I can to help him be a good politician and to become Prime Minister! Because if our baby grows up to be Prime Minister, I'll probably get to meet lots of famous people, and that's always fun.
I'll help our baby run straightforward election campaigns and never stoop to smearing his opponents or trying to dig up their personal histories to make them look bad, like all the other politicians out there do. I'll advise our Prime Minister baby to do what he knows is good and right, regardless of the public outcry.
Then I'll get him to declare my birthday a national holiday, of course. Hooray!
Special People
Special People is serialized superhero fiction with a fistful of twists.
Special people have special problems.
Losing Freight
Losing Freight is a serialized sci-fi novel where you get to vote on what happens next at the end of every page.
DISCOVERY
Prefer the feel of paper to the look of a screen? DISCOVERY is the first quarterly Year of Stories print book. You get nearly 200 pages of exciting fiction for only $11.99! Grab your copy now.
Flare Fiction: Volume 2
Galloway’s Hunt
Galloway's Hunt is a novelette set in the world of Galloway's Voyage, my work-in-progress novel based on the same title character. Buy it now for only 99¢!