It's A Celebration!! Lightly Read Blog Hits 200th Post, Author Applauded For His Abundance of Free Time

While Lauren's brother Freddy sleeps off the hangover induced by Saturday's ALittlePlaceCalled.blogspot.com's 200th Post Celebration Gala, I'm already hard at work, fulfilling my obligation to update friends and family on the mundane and trivial details of day to day life in the tiny mountain hamlet of Aspen, Colorado.

It's been a good run for this here blog. To give you an idea of the magnitude of its lifespan, when the inaugural post hit the interwebs in August of 2006, Lauren and I owned neither a house nor a dog, my brain was pleasantly titanium-free, and Ryan was but a twinkle in his daddy's pants.

All of that has changed, obviously, and we're thankful that much of what we've experienced over the past three years has been memorialized here, if for no other reason than to allow future generations to study our writings and gain some insight into our beautiful yet primative culture.

I don't always get to sit down and write as much as I'd like, and when a week or two goes by with no posts, the boy gets a bit concerned that he may be getting robbed of some time in the spotlight on the glorified Ryan-centric slideshow this blog has become. He's spoiled like that.

And if I've learned nothing else in the four months I've been a father, -- and I haven't -- it's that it's vital you give your child whatever they want, whenever they want it. See that, it worked!!

The best part of this philosophy of parenting is knowing that it will never, ever, come back to haunt me.

To be honest, I haven't had much time for the boy lately, what with my beloved Phillies making their second run to the World Series in as many years. The Nitti house has been filled with palpable angst over the past three weeks, and who's got time to deal with the incessant neediness of an infant when Jimmy Rollins is at the plate with two on and two out in the bottom of the ninth?



Speaking of which, one of the greatest things about the internet is that anything that can be done, has been done. For example, take this video where some bored yet innovative Phils fan dubbed the call of Rollins' walk-off double in Game 4 over the scene in Goodfellas where Henry Hill learns his boys pulled off the Lufthansa heist. Pure genius.

Similarly affected by the Phillies post-season run is this very happy, very blurry man, my brother Mike. I chronicled our mutual love affair for the Fightin' Phils here, and if you've already read it, it won't suprise you to learn that Mike and I shared the final three outs of the Phillies series-clinching Game 5 victory over the sacrificial lambs Dodgers via Skype. I took the opportunity to snap this still photo of our video call while Mike was in the midst of this standard celebratory gesture.

Not to get off on a tangent here, but if you live far away from family, Skype is a kick-ass tool to have. We've got our parents using the technology, and it helps them feel closer to the boy if they get to see him from time to time. Added bonus: if you've ever wanted to put to bed the age-old debate of religion versus science and prove Darwin's theory of evolution, simply hand one laptop to a 68-year old and another to a chimpanzee, and see who can get Skype working first. You'll find that we're not so different after all.

In between baseball games, we've been doing all the things families do. Here we are posing in front of my most recent investment, a pumpkin patch. The value has been skyrocking throughout October, and I expect it to peak right around Christmas. Then it's time to sell and watch the money roll in just in time for the holidays.

With all of the family time recently, I've developed a hypothesis that the long-rumored "maternal instinct" is nothing more than every woman's inherent desire to have someone in the house that she can:

A) dress to her specifications,
B) talk to throughout the day without having to be interrupted by a response, and
C) take photos of in various staged poses for the sole purpose of sharing said photos with her friends in exchange for photos of their kids in various staged poses.

Allow me to present Exhibit A:

Nineteen years from now, if my son gets arrested on the Wisconsin border with three dead hookers in the trunk of his car, this photo should be the first piece of evidence shown by the prosecution to establish motive. Who tucks a kid's flannel shirt into corduroy pants and thinks this won't have some sort of long-lasting effect on his mental state? I don't know much about parenting, but I do know this: doing this to your son can only end badly.

Exhibit B:



Look, I love my wife. She's beautiful and she's smart and she's caring, but she's no Margaret Cho, if you know what I mean.

/OK, you don't know what I mean. Fine, let's see you try and reference a funny female comedian. It's like trying to reference a white running back or monogomous ESPN analyst.

Anyway, who can blame Lauren for wanting that type of audience? Five minutes with the boy and she's feeling like...Wanda Sykes? Kathy Griffin? Lisa Lampenelli? I give up.

And lastly, Exhibit C:

Allright, I'll admit, this one is pretty cool, although Maci doesn't look all that pleased with her new role as baby prop. Within minutes of this photo being taken, it was traveling through cyberspace to Lauren's collection of baby-mama friends, to be ogled and rated as to its level of cutenesss. Verdict? Damned cute.

I've tried to figure out an appropriate way to celebrate reaching post #200, but nothing really comes to mind. When a long-running TV show reaches some arbitrary milestone, it invariably offers up some sort of quick retrospective/musical montage to mark the moment and highlight some of the show's more entertaining moments. Since that concept doesn't work particularly well with the written word, I've decided just to rip off The Simpsons again. Enjoy!!