New additions (update)

Come to think of it, "New additions" is a bit repetitive, isn't it? Hrm.

At any rate:
Aunt Vanessa and Uncle Emerson are doing well, as is Cousin Valentina! The little lady's mom wrote:

Queridos amigos,
Aí está a nossa amada Valentina!
Nasceu no dia 08 de agosto com 3,210 kg e 48 cm.
Uma fofura!
Beijos a todos,
Vanessa, Emerson e Valentina

For us Americans, it's important to note that she didn't give birth to a new Hummer -- Brazilians just don't recognize a decimal point as a decimal point so they stick commas in strange places. So Little Valentina is 7 lbs 1 ounce and 18 inches long. And you can see the family's already revised its e-mail stationery. How cool is that? =)

So here's a picture of the little lady:


Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. Nice work, guys.

Meanwhile, Uncle Rodrigo got some probing done by a veterinarian (oh, how dad loved to write that sentence) and so it's official ... Aunt Melissa has given birth to a son, whom they promptly named Cousin Linus Schrödinger, after the inventor of Linux and a physicist who speculated that his cat was both simultaneously alive and dead, depending on the quantum state of something or another somewhere something. Let the record show that by giving their cat this name, the parents have:

• proven they're truly hardcore nerds
• given birth to a zombie

Anyway, Cousin Zombie Cat is doing well, apparently getting some functions out of his brain besides a desire for, er, other brains. Here's one of his first videos with a new toy. Enjoy!

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EDIT: Aunt Melissa has already responded to the "Zombie Cat" comment. But let's look at this analytically ... The theory is that a cat in a locked box, which can't be seen into, with a 50-percent chance of being washed in acid, is both simultaneously dead and not dead, a state that can't be determined until the box is opened after a set time. It's an illustration of quantum mechanics, which suggests that something can be in two contradictory states simultaneously.

So the cat's dead and not dead at the same time, which is another word for zombie. Fair 'nuff. OK.

But as soon as the family discovered the cat was indeed male, they named him after Schrödinger, thus affirming the zombie status. Zombies are considered neither alive nor dead, sorta -- perhaps something like a virus, which is capable of some basic acts of life but isn't considered to be alive in the general sense. Things that aren't really alive can't be sexed.

So at the same time, then, the cat is both dead and not dead, it's also both male and non-sexed. So do we refer to the cat as he/it and him/thing, if it exists in both states simultaneously? Or should we recognize that both states are valid at any given point and thus either becomes fair game?

More to the point, given that mom will certainly kill dad as soon as she discovers he went from a beautiful new baby to a discussion of unsexed zombie cousins in just a few paragraphs, do we consider dad to be dead or undead? Now we see how the zombies spread so quickly in the movies, and nothing is to be trusted.

Welcome again, Cousin Valentina, to a very loving, but sometimes nerdy and always weird extended family.