So, I'm in the hospital, waiting for my wife's cervix to ripen. Yes, that's the term they use. They also use the term "persuade." Gynocological terminology is very picturesque.

Forty years ago, I'd be pacing a waiting room, a cigarette butt dangling from my lips, and countless others filling the ashtray, one eye on the door from which the nurse will emerge and declare that it's a boy or girl, the other on the pay phone I'll use to notify the handful of people who constitute the beginning of the telephone chain that will inform the world that my family has increased by one. I'd be disconnected from the details of the event, but it will be all I'm thinking about.

Today, I'm sitting next to my wife, no cigarettes in sight (not even in my coat), and I've got a wi-fi connection that lets me tell you all of this now, rather than reconstructing these thoughts in a few days, and replaces the telephone chain to boot. I'm completely connected to the details (hello ripening cervix), unlike my 1966 doppelganger, but on the other hand, I booked my flight to Boise just minutes before I started typing this.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I'm also wearing a silver jumpsuit and a jet-pack. I love the future.