Extremely exciting news: a new sticker. Also, pork loin and pork loin equivalents.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

I know we are not generally for stickering up our vehicles with gun-related stuff. But, this place being a veritable hive of Archer fans (or one-time Archer fans, I'm not sure how the recent seasons have fared) I think a lot of people might appreciate this.

I think I've posted before my stick figure family equivalents:

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Erin had them made for me as a present...she took screencaps from a couple of episodes and stitched them together to get a couple of good stills.

But a new Archer-themed sticker arrived for me and I'm sure you read on my reflected expression just how happy I am to have received this new sticker:

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In other exciting news I got a great deal on this pork loin, which I have placed next to an object of identical mass to give you a sense of scale:

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That pork loin is 9 lbs, 15 oz, which was only about $21 which is just a screaming deal IMO.

The only other things I can think of to report just now are as follows:

1) I recently heard a nurse say "I have NEVER seen anyone walk out of here in heels. Ever."

2) I had a really great week off around Easter of 2019

3) the decision for Erin to leave her fairly stressful city life and job and spend six months at our cabin just focusing on her own mental well-being was probably really worthwhile, even though it did make for a difficult and complicated daily commute for me. Annoyingly it all culminated in Erin deciding to just lie around and do nothing for a couple of days, as evidenced below.

4) This has been a crazy year for me.

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[Chance]

Congratulations!

[LOKNLOD]

Bruh.... Congrats on the great deal on that bitchin' pork loin.

[blues]

Congrats, brother! And to mama!

[LittleLebowski]

This is NOT our InstaPot thread (https://pistol-forum.com/showthread.php?40218-Instapot-thread), everybody understand?!

Congrats, bro :D

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Bruh.... Congrats on the great deal on that bitchin' pork loin.

Seriously life changing meat. Tender, marbled, and inexpensive. You just can't go wrong.

[Duelist]

Wow! Congrats to you and Mama Erin! That is some serious work.

[Totem Polar]

:D:D:D

[SeriousStudent]

Congrats on the new addition. I hope everyone is well. :)

[RJ]

Awesome! Congrats.

[wvincent]

Congrats!!

[Lex Luthier]

Yay! Also, Heh.

I'll just leave this here.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0Gz_6Nwxo

(sent it to son-in-law when grandboy was born, too, FWIW.)

[Crashpad]

Congratulations!

[revchuck38]

Congrats! And you'll be looking for deals for cheap food as the spawn grows. :)

[Tensaw]

Out. Standing! Congratulations!

[Mike C]

Congratulations, one of the most stressful yet richly rewarding experiences in life.

[RevolverRob]

Just so you know, you can’t tattoo a baby.

It’s important.

They get mad about it or something.

Anyways, give Katya my best.

Sincerely,

Uncle Krieger

—

Remind me to tell the story of the time I dressed up on Halloween as Breast Cancer Archer and one of my good friends, who is smoking hot, bought a sweater dress and a shoulder holster to go as Lana Kane. That was a fun Halloween. But can only be told in person.

—

Congratulations, by the by!

[JAD]

Congratulations, G. I’m sure something’s more important, but I can’t think what it might be.

[rd62]

Congratulations and please tell me you named him the Wee Baby Seamus!

Oh, nice pork loin too.

[BillSWPA]

Congratulations! You are now starting the most difficult and rewarding job you will ever have.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Robinson]

Congrats man.

[FNFAN]

Outstanding work by you and the Mrs! They say, "Oh, what a beautiful baby" and "All babies are gorgeous." That is a very handsome young lad!

[SecondsCount]

Congratulations! :cool::cool:

[Cookie Monster]

Congrats. It’s a fucking ride and a half. Nothing like a hug and a kiss from those crazy little chunks of meat.

[MichaelD]

That is absolutely awesome, misanthropist!

[UNM1136]

Congrats. Been a while since mine were that small. Now they are teenagers with minds and mouths of their own and I am counting the days till they are gone!:D

pat

[Rex G]

Congratulations! Well-done!

[Blades]

Congratulations! Keep an eye on him; my little boy turned 28 last year. :)

[luckyman]

What great news! Congratulations!

[Crawls]

Congrats!

[Arbninftry]

Congratulations!!!

[DamonL]

Congratulations!

1. Pork loin is great roasted with just salt, pepper, and garlic rub.

2. Don't confuse pork loin equivalent with pork loin.

3. Cool stickers.

4. Start saving for college now.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

Thanks, everyone! We are quite happy that he seems healthy and doesn't have any obvious challenges right off the bat like major deformities or being a lizard. It did add a bit of an extra layer of nervousness to me, living on the off-grid island over the summer, but Erin thought the experience was very helpful for her. She took the whole thing like a champ, not really acting much different than her usual self; Erin is a bit of a natural stoic and tends to endure things fairly calmly.

Our old life in Vancouver was a lot more stressful for her though and she was not very happy in her job anymore and struggling with a pretty frantic commute and existence in the crowded city.

She is pretty introverted and moving to the island where she hardly had to see anyone and mostly just communed with the forest, the ocean, and bunny rabbits was like a turbine winding down...she became a lot more relaxed and just seemed more mentally healthy. Which was lucky because I had been placed in charge of a bunch of projects at work that I had almost no idea how to run and of course my commute was insane, so I was extremely stressed out. But it was worth it to see Erin in a fairly natural state and I think the whole thing worked out really well because the only concern the obstetrician had going in was Erin's blood pressure, what had been high in Vancouver for years. The big risk with high blood pressure (and also Erin is older than she would want anyone to know with the same risk factor) is apparently an undersized baby.

At one ounce shy of ten pounds I feel confident saying that she successfully overcame the "undersized baby" concerns and clearly gave him plenty of fuel in utero so I don't really know what more I can ask.

We named him Alaric Francis, Alaric being the name of the great Visigothic king who sacked Rome in 410 AD and, I suspect, an honorific which became a name: literally I believe it means "all-right" which I believe is a reference to the right to rule. The origin is proto-norse as far as I know. This name survives as the German Ulrich, which most people know, but mostly dropped out of use in other languages although I believe the Scandinavians occasionally still use the given name Alrek - I have seen it once or twice in hockey. I didn't pick the name because of that though, in fact a lot of what I know about the name came out of discussions afterwards with my sister who is an English prof but whose MA was technically in medieval studies; she studied the evolution of medieval languages into English and somewhat sadly announced that the discussion of his name was her first ever actual practical application of the degree she got back around 1997. Anyway, that was the first successful attack on Rome in about 800 years and the name spread across Europe afterwards, quite possibly as a result of the successful invasion. I was on a rant one morning a couple of years ago about how the destruction of the Roman Empire is always cast in a negative light and to be fair it does plunge Europe into technological darkness but at the same time, what price self-determination? And would the world be a better place if the power of the Roman state had just continued on indefinitely? I think this is the fantasy version that appeals to people who imagine the development of these perfect Star Trek world governments we could have if only you violent, uncontrollable plebes would stop screwing it all up. And anyway Alaric I's sack of Rome to me is sort of this moment where the unchallenged authority of the single state that dominates everything is just smashed in the minds of people at the time and I like it because deep down I'm basically an anarchist or at best a good-natured miscreant. So this was the rant I was on one morning in Starbucks and Erin liked the name and I guess saved it in her head and suggested it sometime during her pregnancy and I liked it because it's not too hard to spell, it's unique without being annoying, and the historical tie-in is amazing.

And Francis was the name of my grandfather, an incredible guy. I had always wanted to name a kid after him, for as long as I can remember. I'm sure I've mentioned my somewhat strained family relations; my dad is an unusal guy with basically no interest in human beings at all and was happiest when prospecting in the bush by himself for long periods of time. My grandfather, on the other hand, was this cheerful, friendly guy who was a fantastic drummer, fluent in French despite hating quebeckers for not stepping up during WWII, and who probably took care of me more often than my actual dad. He'd been in the war from the outset, but always had these funny stories about how he stumbled into a job as a drummer after being accidentally left behind at a base in England, and then spending the entire war goofing off, going from place to place drumming with some kind of honours band, purposefully drumming in funny rhythms to make crowds laugh and getting in trouble with his superiors. This was totally believable because he was a terrific trummer and very funny and he always caught these hilarious breaks in life and everyone could just picture how he'd end up with some job like that. He spent years supplementing his retirement income by betting on horses, which he was great at doing, and he used to take me to the racetrack a lot as a kid, telling funny stories about horses and bar fights and motorcycles and concerts he'd seen and played at. "'Knock it off, Murph,' they shouted, 'just play the damn kit!' But what the hell, I wasn't getting paid enough to get bossed around. I played the drums, I played the stands, I played the floor and the walls and the lamps. Why not? The crowds liked it." He was just a hell of a guy.

There were a couple of hints that something else had happened during the war but nobody picked up on any of it and it was not until after his death that we discovered he had worked covertly in occupied France, exfiltrating people to submarines. He wasn't a drummer. He had been seconded to a branch of British intelligence, and had taken incredible risks and never told anyone a thing about it because at the end of the war, he'd signed the British Official Secrets Act and that was that. So he kept up his cover story for his entire life and we pieced it all together afterwards.

But he was such a great guy that I wanted to name a son after him before I knew any of that. I just loved him for all the times at the track and all the times we'd had ice cream cones at the Beacon Drive-In and all the great advice he'd given me which probably prevented me from turning out a lot worse than I did. All the grandkids called him Frank, not grandad or grandpa or anything, because he wanted us all to just think of him as our friend Frank, just exactly on the same level as us. And to discover, later, that he'd been rescuing people by smuggling them to the coast of Sardinia was just surreal, but somehow it did make sense. He was a hell of a guy.


So there you have it. Presumably a massive persec violation above which I guess I will one day come to regret as the massively empowered civilizational apparatus ever more thoroughly codifies our lives through big data. Unless, of course, some individual with a grudge against monopolistic authoritative power rises up and sacks Silicon Valley, ending the luxuries that come with tech wealth, but winning self-determination for its client states.

I do have a nominee in mind.