At 12:44am Monday (Irish Time), Michelle gave birth to a 9lb 8oz boy. Mother and son are healthy but exhausted. I'm not sure quite how long the actual labor lasted; but I think she started late on Saturday.

My nephew is, as yet, unnamed. David and Michelle have yet to find a boy's name that both of them really like. Under Irish law, they have three months to do so, but Michelle hopes to pick a name within a few days at most.

[Update: they named him Harry.]

It's now two weeks since Michelle's due date. She went into Holles Street Maternity Hospital this morning to have her baby induced. No progress yet. That kid doesn't want to come out! It may be Sunday before it's born.

Ironically, the Wild Geese Players read the Oxen of the Sun chapter of Ulysses last summer, which takes place in Holles Street. Bloom goes to visit his friend Mina Purefoy, who's been three days in labor, and meets up with a crowd of drunken medical students and Stephen Dedalus. Between them, they manage to re­ca­pit­u­late the de­vel­op­ment of the English language.

We fly back to Seattle in the morning, so we certainly won't …continue.

2008 closes, leaving economic wreckage in its wake. Personally and pro­fes­sion­al­ly, it's been a good year. At the national level, it's been both a very good year and a disastrous one. Obama's historic victory is offset by the imploding economy.

My health remains good, I'm a little fitter than I was a year ago. I've notched up a few personal milestones, such as receiving my Competent Com­mu­ni­ca­tor award at Toast­mas­ters and becoming the secretary of Freely Speaking Toast­mas­ters.

My friends and family are, mostly, doing well. My sister is (still!) on the verge of having her first child. Emma's health is never great: she will have surgery to remove abdominal adhesions …continue.

Michelle and her husband David B† came over for dinner. Her baby is now nine days overdue and she's more than ready to give birth.

† Not to be confused with the other David, our brother, who is currently living at my parents' house in Dublin.

We had lunch with Alan and Sheena in Dundrum and met their new baby.

It's been very hard to hook up with my old friends here. We landed seven days ago and the only other meet up was a couple of pints with Jimmy on Monday. They're (almost) all middle-aged, mortgaged, married, and bechilded, and otherwise busy with their own lives. We are to have …continue.

Normally, we have Shuttle Express take us to Sea-Tac airport, but they were completely booked up when I tried to make a reser­va­tion earlier in the week. Lyndol very kindly came over at 6am and drove us down to the airport.

Our plane left an hour late from Seattle, as it came in late the night before and the crew had to wait for the statutory FTC minimum stopover. The late departure from Seatac was no problem, since we had a scheduled 5-hour layover in Philadelpia. After being shoehorned into the plane, we needed to stretch and wandered through several of the terminals. The only excitement was when I realized an …continue.

I tried to take the bus into work today, but no bus showed. I later learned that the #39 had been “tem­porar­i­ly suspended”. Emma drove into downtown Seattle, getting off at the James St. exit. James is steep and it was closed to traffic. She let me out at 7th and James and I walked down to the Smith Tower.

Other people were not so lucky on the steeper streets, as you can see in the photo of a bus hanging over the interstate.

This is the worst snow we've had in several years, and Seattle is not equipped to handle it. Most years, we only get a day or …continue.

When we went to bed on Wednesday night, most of the weekend's snow had melted. We were woken around 5:30am by two large thunder claps, attributed to thun­der­snow. The snow was falling again and fell for most of the day.

We were sensible and stayed home. So, it seems, did almost everyone else at Cozi. I worked remotely for part of the day. Otherwise, we watched movies. I felt no desire to go outside and make snowmen, though we certainly could have.

We fly to Ireland on Saturday morning. I'm a little worried about getting to the airport.

My friends Frank and Lyndol met 32 years ago today, the day they celebrate as their an­niver­sary. For several years, Emma and I have brought them out for dinner on this date. We also celebrate Lyn's birthday, which falls next week.

Frank's health has been poor for some years, but it's grown worse this year. He spent six weeks in hospital in September and October. He's home now, but he's in hospice care.

Naturally, we try to see him often, since he rarely feels strong enough to leave the house, even in a wheelchair. We almost always find him in good form, glad to see us and ready with his stories.

He's somewhat stronger …continue.

Lots of new babies around.

Dilip in North Carolina emailed me the other day and mentioned the recent birth of his daughter, Anuragini. And Alan in Dublin emailed me this morning, to tell me of the birth of his daughter, Beth.

My sister, Michelle Bowles, is due to give birth on the 19th to the first Reilly grandchild. We arrive in Dublin on the 21st. First babies tend to be born late, so we may get there before the baby does. She and David have elected not to learn the gender of the baby, so I addressed their Christmas card to "Michelle, David, and TBD".

It seems like all of my mother's …continue.

In a footnote to the post about Propo­si­tion 8 on November 7th, I said that it was the first in a series of daily posts for NaBloPoMo, the National Blog Posting Month, which I had just found out about.

Here I am a month later, having posted something every single evening. I covered humor; movie and book reviews; being the #1 tech blog (now #2); politics; Thanks­giv­ing; food; personal stuff; and even some technical posts. Whew!

Why bother? As with the two-year-old exercise in book reviews, it was a personal challenge to come up with a post every single evening for a month. Sometimes, the events of the day made …continue.