Emelia Lucille Stahl

As you have no doubt gathered, the biggest news in my life at this moment is the birth of my niece, Emelia Lucille. She was born on Tuesday, June 10, at 9:28 P.M. She weighs 6 pounds, 11 ounces, and is 20 inches long. Due to some complications that occured during delivery, they had to bring her out by cesarean...but mother and daughter are both doing fine now. Last night, I drove down to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach to meet her for the first time. She is the tiniest little thing I can ever remember seeing. I know I've seen smaller babies before...in fact, her older brother, Sawyer, was smaller than that when he was born, but that was eight years ago, so I can't be expected to remember what he looked like then.

I do have to say, she easily wins the title of World's Cutest Baby...no competition. All other babies might as well just give up, because there's no point in even trying to compete against her.

So, little Emy Lu has joined her older sister, Alyson, and older brother, Sawyer. I guess that means I have to purchase an additional Christmas present this year...although babies are pretty easy to shop for. When they get to be ten years old like Alyson is when they become really difficult to shop for. You can no longer just give them any stupid toy...you have to worry about receiving the disdainful looks and worry about them saying things like, "What'd you get me this for?"

Well, today I had the pleasure of subbing for a fourth and fifth grade combo at the same elementary school in South Pasadena. It was a lot easier than subbing for the Kindergarten, although it seems as if any class would be difficult at this time of year. Many of the teachers have told me I'm a brave man for starting out as a brand new sub this close to the end of the year. It's really not that bad, though...although there were times when they just refused to stop talking. I finally got them to quiet down after lunch by telling them that for every minute they spent talking, I would take five minutes off of the kickball game later that day. Damn, I'm a hard ass. It worked like a charm, though. They shut-up right quick. I decided one really good thing about subbing is that it is, for the most part, impossible to oversleep for work...everyday that you have to work, you receive a wake up call. I guess one could foolishly roll over and go back to sleep after receiving the call...so far, I have avoided that pitfall.

So, this weekend I am heading off to Las Vegas. What time I will be leaving depends on whether or not I am called to sub tomorrow or not. Before you tell me to play a quarter for you or anything like that, let me tell you that I probably will not even set foot on the Strip. For me, there are two different types of Vegas trips. There are the trips where I go up with friends and stay in a hotel and cruise the Strip and all that. And, there are the trips where I go up solely to visit my friends, Richard and Jessica Baldwin, who live there. During those visits, I might as well be in Riverside...because there's just as much chance of me going to a casino in each case. Rick is a friend of mine from high school. He met this girl from Las Vegas at summer camp one year...I think it was 1991. They stayed in touch for quite a while. After about three years of on and off dating, they were married in August 1995. I was the best man at their wedding...but I haven't actually seen them for about three years now. He doesn't know I'm coming, but I don't want to give too much away just in case he happens to do a google search for his name before tomorrow evening. I'd hate to be responsible for ruining everything.