But Ted, what will you guys do during the baby shower

Gretchen had her shower this weekend, and only she could really provide details of the shower itself, so I’m going to leave that to her.

Instead, here is what I and most of the boyfriends/husbands did:

Watch the UVA/Duke game at my house while

• Drinking some beer
• Eating delicious Italian sausage and assorted chips, dips, salsas etc.

Unfortunately, it rained enough that grilling was going to be difficult at best. That’s why I went with sausage over say, hamburgers – I know how to cook sausage on a stove but not a lot most other things like ribs or hamburgers. This is one of many lessons for my son – cooking is best done on open flames, not crazy indoor things.

Not surprisingly, at least for our generation, the shower had a de facto mixed gender after party. Most people ended up back at my house, where we confirmed that one of our friends is still a total lightweight. I also ran into a common (for me) hosting problem – she and I have almost opposite taste, and I don’t have stuff on hand, like cranberry juice, that I once did, now that Gret isn’t imbibing. I forgot that we had limeade, and actually whipped up something out of watermelon and cherry snowball syrup that was acceptable when mixed with vodka. These are the kind of skills that I want to pass on to my child. As well as a sense of style. If you squint really hard at the pictures of the nursery, you may notice that bookshelf contains

• Some really cute books in Spanish that Sherri gave him
• The hungry hungry caterpillar, which Sharon included when she painted the bookcase
• The scrawny tawny lion – my pick
• Ted Allen’s Everything A Man Needs to Know about Style

Gretchen is, how shall we say, not amused

The sudden influx of ladies who’d just been at a baby shower (and as Kevin put it, charge of estrogen that was suddenly interested in discussing their plumbing) lead to a vital and monumentous decision – we should go shooting. So off we went to Continental Arms (by TESSCO and the post office off McCormic/Padonia)

When we got there, we realized that I had some experience shooting, although mainly not in the US, James had never shot handguns, Chris knew what he was doing and knew the range and Kevin… Once we saw him in action, I’m a little scared of the seemingly gentle Kevin and his shooting ability…

Given the mix of shooting experience, we mixed up our choices and rented

• A concealed carry sized .40 (small and powerful, Kevin and Chris loved it, James and I thought it was too small)
• The standard Glock 17 (tried to get James to try the side pointed fast shooting, gangster style, but he wasn’t interested)
• A 1911a model .45 (My personal favorite. Huge though) and…
• A ridiculously large .44Magnum revolver. This is the gun from Dirty Harry. It’s a wrist breaker that we had no business shooting. Kevin still put six in the x-ring on his second go.

We then met the girls again for India Palace, and followed that with drinks at the house again. Given the theme of dinner, Chris and I broke into the Rangpur Gin. Highly recommended, but not quite Hendricks or Jin level.

All in all, a great day, and a nice mixing of traditional guy activities (Football, Beer, Guns) and getting ready for bambino.