Recently a fuming DeLorean showed up in our driveway. A dashing young man hopped out and handed me this note. Before I knew it the car had pulled out and taken off. By the time I could follow on foot I saw the silver streak disappear in the clouds. Apparently where he is going they don't need roads.

Hi Mom,

This is Peanut from the Future. Actually you know me as ..... but that will be our secret. I thought you should know that I really appreciated you carrying me for nine months. I know that was bad, lots of kicking and punching at 4 or 5 in the morning. I know that I have been taxing your back a lot recently (or recently back in 2010). I know that you probably felt like someone had taken over your body. So Happy 33rd Birthday Mom. You are, were, and will be the best.

Your Son.

It was a strange day, but Bianca is 33 on 3/3/10 so I guess that's what can you expect given the numerological power of such a date. Happy Birthday Best Friend from both of us. We are both glad that you were born. Thanks also, to Nancy and Domenic for having such an awesome daughter.

This post has been brought to you by Universal Studios and Robert Zemeckis. Also we got our power bill this week and apparently we used 1.21 jigawatts of electricity last month. Someone must have left a hair dryer on ALL MONTH.

My Dad's Mom, who went by more names than a 1930s bankrobber passed away on Monday. We called her Nunni, which is a variant of "grandmother" in Italian. She was 93 years old. She did, however, know that Peanut was on his way, having seen all of the ultrasound pictures. She also chatted with Bianca and I about it at Christmas.

There are many things that Peanut will not get to experience that are classic "Nunni" things. First, he will never have the pleasure of walking into Nunni's house to a hot bowl of Pastina and a generous helping of Parmesan cheese. He won't know the joy of having Nunni telling him that just as he is growing she is shrinking. He will also not know the frustratingly simple (and usually correct) answers that Nunni had for seemingly intractable moral dilemmas.

One thing I would love Peanut to have is Nunni's survival instinct and adaptibility. Her family evaded a sweeping plague of tuberculosis in Italy to arrive in America just in time for the Great Depression. Nunni's mom died when Nunni was five and her father was a coal miner, a staggeringly dangerous job. She survived the Depression acquiring habits that would be with her for life: reusing tea bags, eating raw bacon (THAT is tough), and never, ever wasting food.

But more than her survivor instinct I hope that Peanut get's Nunni's sense of adventure. After her husband was ravaged by diabetes and passed away, Nunni continued on. She went to Rome to see the Pope. She went on vacations, visited her children and grandchildren. Even after she moved to Ohio because of a bad slip and fall she still had a zeal for life, as is evidenced by the picture above, which was taken at her first appearance at Monica's famous Christmas Cookie Bakeoff. She thought I looked hilarious with the hat on and offered to pose for the camera. That is a bit of humor that few then 91 year olds can match. Her life was one of constant exploration and adventure. After 93 years of living her life can be summed up by a credo we should all live by:

ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE.

(Yes I know I stole that from Up).

PS: The Pittsburgh Sculimbrenes would like to call Peanut Horseshoe Meatloaf Sculimbrene. THAT is definitely in the running folks.

This weekend was spent getting things ready for Peanut's arrival.

On Saturday our brand new washer and dryer arrived. The washer was a Christmas present from Grandparent Sculimbrenes. They are really sweet looking and really we were in dire need. Our washer and dryer came with the house and they were old. The dryer's tag, which I crawled around to see before it left, said it was made in 1979 which makes it really old. We have done our best to keep them going until now. The dryer caught fire once when I was at a Bob Dylan concert with Bianca's brother. The dryer drum also stopped tumbling and we opened it up and repaired it. The washer leaked a couple of times and we were able to fix that as well. If they were cars they would be jalopies. But they are gone and the urge to fix up the rest of the basement is now a little bit stronger. HOME THEATER....

After the appliances arrived so did Myles, Colby and the 'rents. Myles was really funny. He told me "Uncle Tony you say 'hilarious' a lot" which is totally true, especially when I am around him. We played around all afternoon. Myles wanted to go up in the attic, so I showed him just peek. He also wanted to be stuffed in our luggage, which I obliged. Colby on the other hand was perfectly satisfied rockin' out. Other than being 9 months old, white, and not playing a piano or wearing sunglasses he is a dead ringer for Stevie Wonder when he is jammin'. He is getting more lively every time we see him, he even crawled for us.

Just to cement my reputation as Crazy Uncle Tony I gave Myles one of my $2 bills. I love getting them at the bank and I had three on me so I gave him one. He told his parents "I got monies." Then he decided he wanted to throw it away, trying multiple times to put it in the kitchen garbage can.

Last night we started whittling down the Best Picture Nominees. We have seen Avatar and Up. The flick we saw Saturday night was The Hurt Locker. It follows an EOD (explosives and ordinance disposal) team in Iraq in 2004. It was REALLY good. Intense, graphic, and frightening, but good. The lead actor, Jeremy Renner, who was a guest star on one of our favorite shows, Angel, is amazing.

Today we put up the curtain rods in Peanut's room. Funny thing about an old house: nothing is square. We wanted the rods to be an inch out and an inch and half up from the window frame and that is exactly what I did. Bianca stood back and pronounced them distinctly not level. I measured again and again the distances were right. Then I realized: the window is not level and the frame not square. UGH.

After that we took a long walk in Ayer. It was about 41 degrees and Mama Bear needed to stretch her legs. We usually do the this route on bikes, so the distances were a little off. We saw a guy on cross country skis, a few people on roller blades and some HARDCORE cyclists. Because of the bike thing we went a little too far and Peanut's Ku Fung made the trip back a bit more hurried than the way out.

All in all it was an excellent winter weekend with a nice visit from the Nephews (and their parents). Ever so often, Bianca would let me know and I would wait, hand on belly, for Peanut to make his move. I felt him karate kick his mom about a half dozen times. Her bladder felt it a bit more often.