Hobo Jo. Warden Jordan. Blanket Burglar. JoJo Monkey Bean. You’re the best, and the men in your life love you!

Congratulations to Eric and Tracy on the birth of Blake Christopher Hatton! 9lbs! He’s a pound and a half more than McLean is today, and we’ve got a 3 week head start! No cross-weight class wrestling at the Crawfish Boil.

The Baby 1.0 project launched early— and caught me without the Baby Blog project started. I quickly pushed out a MT4 powered baby blog within a day or so of McLean’s arrival— but it hasn’t been fully tested and is still very much a project under development… As far as I can tell from the Activity log, Happy and Maura have had some trouble leaving comments. Anyone else having trouble? Can you send me a mail or leave me a comment below on what the problem or error was that you received? McLean and I thank you for your help.

McLean Howard Hudson

A three week early surprise— fully cooked and in perfect shape! A first name from my Scottish family and a middle name from Joanne’s grandfather. These are the first of thousands of photos to be taken. Both mom and baby are doing great!

This is what the internet is for: pen reviews handwritten with the reviewed pens. I love it. I have to get a Pilot G-2 1.0mm Black and a Zebra Sarasa Clip 0.4mm (Black) now.

Some BEFORE and CURRENT photos of the first floor. AFTER photos are a long ways away.

In the CURRENT shots the original external wall to the house is exposed. Around the 1920s the house was expanded backwards into its lot— and apparently they just framed the back wall of the house into the middle of the house! Crazy. We’re going to span that chunk of brick with a steel beam to allow us to open the space wide up.

Photos below after the jump.

Marty says:

Hey - how about some more pics of the new place? I’m dying to see it. I’d also love to live vicariously through you with a renovation blog story line, now that I’m 50% of the way done with mine…

The only completed project so far is the basement. A little “parging” and it’s gone from “Put the lotion in the basket” to “alien autopsy”. Before and after shots below: