into 2006

well, whereas my posts and updates have been sporadic and random, i can say that this is the last one for 2005. quite a year, but what a wonderful year as illustrated by this pic.

our very best wishes to all of you, and let's hope that 2006 proves to be most excellent to all of us!!

cheers

lee, michele and james

James two weeks on

hey everyone

a bit late again, but here's a pic of James aged two weeks to the minute. and before you get any funny ideas, the hairy nipple he is lying against is mine!!

all is still well. he has an extremely healthy appetite and seems to be sleeping reasonably well on a night, sometimes four or five hours straight!!

be excellent to each other!!

Merry Christmas Erika

we decided to get Erika some clothes vouchers for Christmas. we also decided on a very impressive and somewhat different form of wrapping parcel for the vouchers.

Christmas

hello! here be the three of us on Christmas Day at my parent's house, just after their usual excellent breakfast! sorry if i look a bit like a hunchback, i have a great tendency to "overlean" for photographs as i think i will be a touch too tall in them!

as was the case in the earlier post, Christmas was wonderful. James has been given some really excellent toys, and he is enjoying the ones designed for newborns - the colours black, white and red are all he can detect apparently, and the funny looking stuffed ones he has of that nature are popular.

as for us, well, Michele and I got the best present we could ever have hoped for, so we agreed not to get each other anything more. the money would be wiser spent or held on to for anything James needs. that said, the family were very generous to us - i now own all of Father Ted on DVD (ace!), and Michele's passion for Sudoku continues with a rather special handheld electronic game of it.

James is off for his first weighing tomorrow. he has a healthy appetite, and i assure you he has no toilet troubles, so i will be kind of interested in seeing what the new weight is. all i know he is very, very, very comfortable to hold on to and watch and watch.

right then, will try and give more updates as and when time permits!

be excellent to each other!

one week later

hey everyone

hope you had a good Christmas! OK, i know this pic is somewhat late, but here's James exactly one week on from his birth - to the minute! sorry, i intended to post it sooner, but as i am sure you can all guess, days are busy and nights are busy right now!!

we are all still doing well - we had a wonderful Christmas, and James got to see all the grandparents over the weekend. he also has some most ace toys!!

last of Little James for now

having a sleep - sensible lad!!

another James Robert Liam

being held by a very proud grandmother!!!

James Robert Liam

born 7:45pm SA time, 3.22kgs, 15th December 2005, 48cm long. mother and baby very well and very happy!!

sorry, too tired to write much, except how happy we are! let me put more pics up instead!!

love and best wishes to all who have sent kind words through to us!

Ladies of Denver : Urgent Announcement

i am pleased and proud to announce that my good friend Blondie will be putting on a snowboarding display for the benefit of the ladies in Denver, Colorado this weekend.

all ladies in the area are most welcome to go along and watch his highly stylish and class moves. as he is a ladies' man of some note and considerable reputation, i guarantee that you will not be disappointed.

i would imagine that on an evening of the weekend he could be tempted into a smart jaccuzzi, so long as the right quality ale and bong matter are provided.

the baby situation

hi everyone

well, after some long, hard, emotional and medical days, i am pleased to say that Michele and James/Napoleon are both fine, but still in the same body, as it were.

we did indeed go through the inducing process and all that stuff for some 18 hours on December 2nd, but he was having none of it. the doctors and experts are somewhat confused as they have not seen two inducing attempts not work before, but there you go, what do you expect when you consider who the parents are!!

at the moment, then, there is something of a concern that Michele might be missing the enzymes needed to allow the cervix (less technical term - "the business end") diallate (less technical - "open up"), and thus we may have no choice but to go for a caesarian.

however, we do have the time to still try for a natural birth, which is what Michele really wishes to have. we have up until the 14th for her to go into labour naturally. if there is no joy, then we will be in hospital that night to try for another inducing. if that does not work, well, then it's a caesarian.

as i am sure you can imagine, the upheaval and all involved has left us drained somewhat, but we are fine. just waiting still!!!

i promise to give more news as and when i can on what happens next!!

erm..................

Revolver, apparently, is Guy Ritchie's return to form after the ill-fated Swept Away managed to all but wipe out the solid, excellent name he had given himself with Lock, Stock and Snatch. ahem, no it bloody isn't.

OK, there's a whole stack of avant-garde, post-modernist stuff i could lambast you with right here, but unfortunately the whole thing, as far as this film goes, is an illusion. it's a whole load of nonsensical gibberish being advertised as "intelligent". yeah, that's right - if you don't get it, you are the thick one, it's the film-makers who are the clever chaps. no, not at all.

SPOILER PARAGRAPH : yes, Mr Richie, we get the clever Green/Gold spin on money. you could not have made it much more obvious. granted, no idea on the $12 note concept at all. we even get the A to Z reference as a spectral guide to the narrator, if i can call him such. but what exactly is the conclusion???

i think i will watch it again to see what exactly happened in it, but my initial advice would be steer well clear of this film.

the best film of 2005.

Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang turned out to be all that i suspected it would be. and then some.

in a year which has seen some decent contenders for film of the year, like in particular The Descent but also Revenge Of The Sith and Batman Begins, this one is a plain, simple work of cinematic genius. Shane Black has always had a reputation of being a writer of note, and the one question hanging over his directorial debut is why on earth did he wait so long if he's this good?

the cast are outstanding to the point of dazzling. here we get the Robert Downey jnr excellence of Natural Born Killers and Chaplin, the film for which i still maintain he should have got an Oscar for. it's difficult to find the right words to convey just how good he is. could there be a possible comparison? not really, this is a one-off performance and well worth seeing for him alone. except, of course, you get so much more and what you get is a brilliant Val Kilmer too. acting / performance wise, this is one step beyond his work in Wonderland, which if you know me is saying something as that was also quite a film. in fact, does that count on the list for 2005 or was it last year? anyway.....

.......i am perfectly aware that i have not mentioned much, if anything, of the plot of this film. and quite deliberatley so. much like, say, Fight Club or even a Usual Suspects of Se7en, this film works best when you know next to nothing of what it is about or what to expect from it. i implore you to trust me and see it as soon as possible and know as little as possible about it when you do watch it!!

otherwise, Napoleon kicked at me for much of the film, which was nice!!

on a dour cinematic note, i did have occassion to re-watch The War Of The Worlds. not as bad as my initial reaction to it, but it remains by and large a very hollow, empty and pointless film. the only aspect of consequence to it is, as far as i can tell, it is the first time in his career that Tom Cruise has not had his face slap bang in the middle of the poster for it (i suspect he wasn't on the Legend one but i am not 100% on that). quite frankly, i am surprised he left his name on it. on that note, why on earth Mr Spielberg has gone back to being "Mr Slumming It" is beyond me - i may not be the greatest admirer of his films, but he has a huge talent and none of it is on display with this one. so what's the problem with it? the fact that 30 minutes of the "ending" takes place in a basement springs gloriously to mind. very reminiscent of the "30 minutes on a train station platform" opening to Matrix Revolutions, that other spectacular failure of note.

i would be interested to see or hear from anyone who actually liked this version of War Of The Worlds, as it happens. there must be some point of view or interpretation i am missing??

oh well, away from cinema, Michele and James/Napoleon are doing rather well, thanks. not much longer to go at all now!!

now go and see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang!!!!!

tickets booked

well, we will soon be at the cinema to see Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. it has Robert Downey jnr in it, and looks rather smart. i recall reading about it when it showed at Cannes earlier this year, cannot work out why the delay in the final release. all reviews are good, so off we go.

will try and post a review when we have seen it, but things are getting busy these days as you can probably well imagine!!

outstanding investments

hey, it's payday and 13th cheque time and all that good stuff. whereas most of the money is going towards any and all of James/Napoleon's requirements, here's something i could not resist - an ace Darth Vader statue.

oh, i also picked up a Samsung DVD-R drive. tried one disc on it, it seems OK. now go and admire Darth Vader.

ahem, one more scan......

ok, THIS one is the actual last scan. i post it with some reservation, but Michele seemed quite keen.

what is it a scan image of? well, it's what Cliff out of Dead Man On Campus would refer to as the "junk"...

one last scan

hey everyone

well, this could well be the last scan you see of young Napoleon (OK, James) whilst he is still safely in Mummy's tummy. the date of birth ebbs ever closer - Friday 2nd December! time to be scared? well, what's the point in that, we will have to be ready and just try to do our very best!

the doctor is "as happy as ever" with progress, he would just like the little one to turn a bit more before next friday. erm, if you know about these things then perhaps you will know what exactly is meant by that; i find myself too worried to ask or find out more!!

there is more stuff around, but let me not distract from the baby update!!

Alien vs Predator

OK, a year after getting and playing A v P 2, i have finally found a copy of the original game. nice one!!

it is a lot tougher, like. the weapons are somewhat limited, and the controls cumbersome. ho hum, i eventually (on easy) managed to finish off the marine level. it was quite class at one point - i had the surround sound on, and got the shock of my life when i heard the Predator long before i saw him. the ending is against the queen alien, and the way you finish her off is very much like the film Aliens.

i am having a crack as playing as the Predator right now. it's smart how you get extra energy by ramming some sort of knives into yourself, and i notice that everyone can see through my cloaking device and shoot me anyway.

i am not the biggest lover of games, but it has to be said i make an exception for things that would interest me anyway. you know, stuff based on films and what have you.

and just when exactly will Duke Nukem Forever be released? or is it out already??

parental advisory

this is my good friend and respected colleague Mervin. Mervin today suggested that he wished to have an unrepeatable act performed on himself by a "devenomed viper" or some sort of snake. i would suggest that if it was de-venomed, that would take all the challenge out of it.

Mervin also once shared with me his theory about the death of Tupac Shakur. for legal reasons i feel it unwise to republish it here, but it involved Mr T and Cheetos.

Merv, if you are reading this, it is an honour to present you on my blog site.

oh go on then, another pic.........

here's Richard, Erika, Michele and myself with young Katie Louise. sorry that i look knackered in it, spent two hours on the road to get over to see her!!

Erika is quite protective of young Katie, when she is around no one else is allowed to hold her for too long!!

notice the "soon" look in Michele's eyes :)

an advert

hey everyone

sorry again for the lack of posts - hectic times all around, as i am sure you can imagine!!

here's the newspaper add for Katie Louise - figured i had best post it here to avoid the ageing of newspaper print!!

all is well on our side - counting down to December 2nd, when Michele will (if all goes to plan) be giving birth. no doubt it will be a rough day for her, so please keep her in your thoughts!

cheers everyone!