Knocked up!

Before you go and get your knickers in a twist, I'm not talking about me. I'd like to announce that my dear friend Clare is going to have a baby. It's her first pregnancy and the baby is due in January.

Clare being pregnant is pretty trippy for me, as she's one of my closest friends -- a sister, really. I'm expecting the pregnancy to be a recurring topic on RBlog, so I want you to know a little bit more about Clare, for background.

Clare and I met each other in our first year of college. She was a bit of an odd duck, coming from the Mid-West to a school full of West Coast kids. As a result of her Mid-western upbringing, Clare has a sense of propriety about her that made her stand out to me. For instance, she was (and is) an excellent conversationalist, in a way that I think is underappreciated (and almost non-existent in college freshmen). I admired her in school because she had such an easy time talking to people, especially guys -- she'd ask them tons of questions about themselves and would always remember every detail they told her. Then later, she'd follow up and ask them how each specific thing was going. It makes you feel really special when someone remembers the details about your life. Everyone loved her for that. It also made her a fabulous person to go to parties with. Of course, it didn't hurt that the parties we went to were at frats, and Clare is super hot in an athletic way: trim, big ta-tas, and would regularly hold her own in co-ed soccer and racquet ball matches. She literally had a fan club at Sigma Chi.

Here's a photo from a rained-out backpacking trip we took to the Olympic Peninsula just before our graduation:




Clare and I were supposed to hike in and set up camp. Ross (the now dad-to-be) and another guy were going to hike in and meet us. It was raining so hard, that by the time they got there everything was soaked, including the inside of the tent (because we spilled a beer or three in it). The ladies wanted to tough it out, but Ross was having none of it -- he drove us to a motel. We camped there instead.

These days, Clare works for a book publisher. She's married to the above mentioned Ross. They got married in St. Louis (Clare's hometown) a couple of years ago. I got to be in the wedding, which involved an astonishingly good-looking wedding party, if I do say so myself.




Since the wedding, I have seen less and less of Clare and I blame Ross for that.* Clare and Ross recently bought a house in Washington DC, which is a little far away for my taste. Something about Ross being a consultant in intelligence means they have to live where the intelligence agencies are... or something like that. Every time try to clear up the details, he just says he can't discuss it. The house thing seems like it would be good for the kid, though. It will have its own room and everything.

*Hi Ross!