To maintain my status as a good (or at least not negligent) uncle, I feel I need to post new pictures of Brandon when I can. When that fails (my zoom lens doesn’t quite reach 400 miles away), the least I can do is link to some.

Last week Amy and I got our first glimpse of Brandon in the flesh. He may have preferred that our visit hadn’t coincided with his bris, but I’m sure he’ll forget all about that by the time he actually knows who we are. I also added a little movie I took with my digital camera that clearly shows him smiling at his uncle (what good taste he has).

At 8:56PM on Thursday, March 9, Randy and Tamar had a baby boy named Brandon Noah Seff. I guess that makes them parents or something–but it makes me an uncle, and that’s pretty cool. And as any child a few days old should, he’s now got his own Web site, complete with the first batch of pictures. I’ll add more when I take some this weekend in LA.

For my birthday, Amy took me to a surprise B&B location in Napa (of course I was driving, so eventually she had to reveal the locale). We stayed at the Daughter’s Inn, in the Lords and Ladies room (as seen here), which was quite lovely. The weather didn’t cooperate as much as it could, but we did manage to eat and drink ourselves to excess, as well as escape before they issued a flood watch for the Napa river.

Last weekend we went to the San Francisco Zoo to see all the lovely caged animals. In addition to seeing the bored lemurs, tapirs, rhinos, penguins, and other assorted beasts, I was able to confirm Molly’s place in the feline kingdom after noticing that the lions and tigers were just as lazy as she is. The only real different is size and the fact that they could maul me in a split second. I guess that’s why the animals are at a safe, zoom lens distance.

Apparently, there is room enough under our roof for two published authors. A few months ago, Amy wrote an article about educational challenges for foster youth, which now appears in the American Bar Association’s Human Rights Magazine.

Friday was my 32nd birthday, which I celebrated by going out for Thai food with several friends (as well as that fiancee of mine) and removing red-eye from all the overly-flashed photos captured on my digital camera–thank you Photoshop Elements. (Click on the picture to see the rest of them.) The best part was when they dimmed all the lights in the restaurant and brought out my cake/ice cream combo complete with two candles. I blew those suckers out posthaste–then I blew out the candle on the table for good measure.

After much wrangling with Apple’s new iWeb app, I’ve managed to put up the first incarnation of our wedding Web site. iWeb has several shortcomings, but bringing the individual pages into Dreamweaver let me fix a few things (such as having links open in new pages, and getting long links to actually work properly). This is a 1.0 version of the site, and I’ll be adding more as we get further along in the process (you’ll notice in clicking on the links to wedding registries that we haven’t actually picked any items yet). But progress is progress…

At approximately, well, sunset Maui time on November 27, I asked Amy to be my wife. And she, always the adventurer, agreed with surprisingly little cajoling (OK, none, to be precise). After the rainiest day I’ve seen in many trips to Hawaii over the years, the skies cleared enough for us to climb into a damp hammock for a little time together before heading off to dinner with my parents. It was there I sprang my trap. My plea went something like this: “I know you like jewelry, so I got you something. But before I give it to you, you need to agree to something. Amy J, will you marry me?” The answer was yes (which was perfect because, apparently, stores don’t like to take back rings once you’ve had them custom made for a person). I then found my sleuthing skills had not been quite as sharp as I’d hoped, because the ring was a bit too big…but better that than too small, since it fit on her finger without the need for industrial-strength lubricant. (We’ll get it resized when we get home.) My parents were in happy shock when they met us in the hotel lobby and Amy thrust her diamond-encrusted digit in their direction. And our impromptu celebratory dinner was rather busy with many simultaneous cell phone calls to the mainland to inform friends and family of our news. The restaurant was even nice enough to give us a free dessert and a (obviously pre-signed) congratulatory card from the staff. Now on to the hard part…planning a wedding. [For an updated photo gallery, click here.]

Last weekend Amy officially moved in. Seeing as her bed is newer, nicer, and much bigger (a Cal King), I took advantage of Craigslist to give away my 7-year-old mattress and frame. The move was pretty easy, but the hardest part for me is adjusting to a new bed, and one rotated 90 degrees from my previous bed. There was also a lot of reorganization (moving my desk over, ceding control over much of my closet space, etc), but Molly seems to be doing OK with it–and after all, it’s really the cat’s place anyway, so that’s the most important part.