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There’s your baby pic!  What a doll.  She wouldn’t let you down.  I wonder, could there ever be too many pictures of Avery Peppermint Taverner?  No.  No there could not.  She’s got something new for us every day.  Today she loved hanging out – didn’t want to be put down.  Just wanted to be with us and chat.  And she’s discovering TV (it’s hard to miss 40+ inches), so we’ll have to pay a little more attention to our programming choices.  Fewer fountains of blood and more fountains of chocolate, maybe.  More ponies and rainbows and fewer Bourne fight scenes.

So you’ve probably been suffering from an itchy trigger finger waiting for me to post my Movember donation link.  I have felt horrible denying you for so long.  It’s just not fair.  To you, or to the fight against testicular cancer and other men’s health issues.  For me, it came down to this: Hurricane Sandy became a more immediate concern, and I really felt that over the short term, money wanting a new home should be going to the Red Cross, or to any of the many worthy projects focussed on the recovery effort.  Thousands of people are still without power, many without even homes, which, right here at the epicenter of America, is a testament to just how bad the damage is.  FEMA and services at the state and city levels will go a long way in helping rebuild, but right now a lot of people need warm clothes and hot meals.  Our own unique fundraising effort has stalled – our silk-screener seems to have evaporated.  I guess nothing beats good ol’ cash anyway.

That’s not to say that Movember is any less a worthy project.  Last year, 854,288 Mo Bros and Mo Sistas raised over $126 million USD worldwide.  This is a huge deal, despite its furry face.  If you’d like to find out more, check out my Mo Bro Jason’s page on the Movember site here, and give some serious consideration to making a healthy donation.  If not for your nuts, do it for the nuts of someone you love.

I should probably get a proper doctor one of these days, myself.

Happy Friday, people.  May your weekend be super great.

Avert your eyes.  You are not up to this.  The human mind has not evolved to the point where it can withstand such intensely high levels of stimulation.  You heart will boil.  Your brain will turn to goo.  Your face will split in half.  Your day will be utterly ruined, and your family may not recognize you.

Unless you like cute baby pictures.  Then I imagine you will be fine.  If you are currently in a cubicle at work, you will soon be surrounded by coworkers wanting to know why you made the gushy cute picture noise so loudly.  Probably, they have heard you do it before.

You have been warned.

Told you.  Scoop your heart soup back up into your chest.  Should I continue?  Or should we wait for everyone to gather round?

It’s just a bit ridiculous how one fella can score so high on the beautiful family scale.  I must have bribed somebody huge in the lineup.

Wait, how’d that get in there?  That is not even a little bit of a cute baby pic.  What’s the deal, yo?  Well, as it happens, Marjorie thought it would be fun to buy me a violently orange toque so I wouldn’t get hit by trucks anymore.  I love it, of course.  So there.

Look at that adorable baby girl!  I can hardly stand it!  Gramma-by-proxy Rita had to wait patiently for her Peppermint time, but they both enjoyed it when it finally happened.

And there’s the Taverner family (Taverner-Phillips, just for Andrea Lewis-Taylor).  It’s true, sometimes Dada is allowed to be in the pictures.  Sometimes.

I looked to see if I had any pics worth sharing from yesterday’s L’Oréal Professionnel shoot at Le Parker Meridien, but the guy behind the camera, strangely, doesn’t get much opportunity to take pics.  I wonder if I could have said “ironically” there.  I think I could have.  Maybe I’ll get a chance to snap a couple behind-the-scenes during the two-day shoot in a couple weeks.

Avery’s US passport arrived yesterday, and mine from Canada today.  Her picture is adorable and hilarious.  Mine is… not.  But we are both travel-able.  Marjorie has started packing for Christmas.  Not lying.  Well, exaggerating.  She’s unburied the old cellphone.  Unburied is a word?  Where are you now, spellcheck?  Anyway, Marjorie is very excited that her trip home is barely more than a month away.  Which isn’t unreasonable, given how fast the last two months have flown by.  Little Pepper is eight- and a half- weeks old.  Already.  The brain astounds.  I am boggles.

She smiles a lot.  Huge grins as soon as she wakes up and sees you.  That’ll brighten your day, yes it will.  And she’s just shy of laughing.  She squeaks.  And chirps.  Marjorie put her down on her back on my chest, and I talked to her, and she twisted her head around to look up at me, and reached right up to touch my face.  All on purpose and everything.  She lost her hands again right away, but it’s all happening.  Next comes college, I suppose.

I can tell I’m working more these days.  I’m writing less on the ol’ bloggy blog.  I’d love to talk about our various writing projects, and it’s very tempting, but there are as many cautionary tales as there are stolen ideas, so you’ll just have to wait for the movie.  Or tv series.  Or app.  All of these things are coming.  2013 is looking… full.

What would I like for Christmas, after family, friends, health, happiness, and a general feeling of global peaceyness?  These or this?

And what about the light of my life, my best girl ever, my darling beloved bride?  This is out of the question.  Also this.

For Avery… possibly something crinkly to bat around.  Used wrapping paper would do the trick.  No?

Coming soon: the latest Best Christmas Ever.