Keith’s Amusing Musings

The winner of the “A picture is worth 300 albums” contest is: No one.

Nichole is the only person who submitted an entry. Notably, all four of her answers were correct. However, she missed two of the four Anita Baker albums. As a consolation prize, she has won her choice of one of the six albums involved in the contest. Congrats, Nichole!

The answers are below for anyone who is curious. I hope to have a better showing in future contests.

Anita Baker The Songstress (1983) Rapture (1986) Giving You the Best that I Got (1988) My Everything (2004) Coldplay Parachutes (2000) X&Y (2005)

In January, TB and I are heading to Phoenix for the annual P. F. Chang’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona race. It will be my second half-marathon and a race that seems popular with our family: TB ran the full marathon in 2006 and returned with her mom and sister in 2007 for the half. The course map below.

I’m looking forward to experiencing the adrenaline of race day again. This time there will be a lot more runners on a much warmer and flatter course. This being only my second race, I am not quite ready to set a time goal although I am still ecstatic about finishing my first half in 1:56:56.

The short spurts of daylight are at the top of the list for worst parts about training this time of year. The cold and rain are manageable but running long distances in the dark is generally bad news, particularly when sharing the road with Seattle drivers. Endurance isn’t as much a problem as when I began training for the Bellingham Bay half so now I’m working on getting stronger and running more efficiently.

Off to the races…

I am unable to find the right words to capture the excitement and nervousness I feel as TB and I head down this fork in the road of the journey we began together almost 14 years ago. As crazy and unbelievable as it sounds, we are nearing the midpoint at 19 weeks as of yesterday.

These first 19 weeks have undoubtedly been so much longer for TB than me and she is certainly proving why she is The Boss by how together and on top of it she is. My wife is already amazing and now she’s having our baby. Wow.

Below are ultrasound pictures from various stages of early pregnancy.

8 weeks, 5 days	9 weeks, 3 days
11 weeks, 5 days	13 weeks

Now is a good time to tell you about the new www.keithandtosha.com. It will eventually serve as the one-stop-shop for the personal pictures and videos we want to share with family and friends.

Finally, some particulars:

1. The baby is due March 27, 2009.
2. The baby was conceived on my birthday. TB got caught slipping.
3. We are not finding out the sex, it will be a surprise.
4. The chances of us naming our first child after you are pretty slim. However, do share your favorite names by posting a comment. The portmanteau, Keisha, has already been suggested by our friends Bus Chick and Bus Nerd.

I’m going to be somebody’s father. How real is that? Obama really needs to win.

Silverlight 2 officially released today and included several breaking changes that required me to update my blog. Unfortunately, that also means you will need to update your installation which should just be a matter of clicking on the “Install Silverlight” badge like the one below. Future releases should auto-magically update without requiring you to do so manually.

I’ve scoured my site and updated all the Silverlight 2 content so things should just work. Of course, I would really like to know if you encounter any problems. If you can watch this video you should be all set.

I made some upgrades to this site to improve viewing and navigating for visitors using the iPhone or iPod touch. You will only see the custom look if you are reading the site on the iPhone. Otherwise, you will see the blog normally. Below are the before-and-after pictures of this site being viewed on the iPhone.

I am relying on the WPTouch plug-in which is about as simple to install and configure as it gets. I wish more software was as easy to install, configure and get working the first time. Separate but related, I also added a custom icon for bookmarking the site on your iPhone Home Screen. To see it, click the ‘+’ while viewing the site on the iPhone and choose “Add to Home Screen.”

Now you may be wondering two things:

1. Why did I customize my site for the iPhone?
2. How did I get those before-and-after pictures?

The answer to both is simple: I bought an iPhone 3G.

‘Tis true. TB made me do it so she could get one too. Ok, ok, maybe it was the other way around. Regardless, I sold out and retired my Motorola Q (aka Mobile ENIAC) and ended my cheap Sprint SERO plan. I have no regrets—other than the price differential between my former Sprint SERO plan ($30/month) and our joint AT&T FamilyTalk plan ($149.99/month).

The iPhone 3G is an amazing little device, far from perfect, but amazing nonetheless. TB uses hers more than I have seen her use any mobile phone.