Eric: October 2006 Archives
October 24, 2006
It's hard to believe it's already the end of October. (Of course, it would be easier to believe if it weren't still hitting 80 every day. I want Fall, damnit!) It seems like it was just a few months ago that we were carving pumpkins with our (still child-free at that point) friends Stephen and Shannon, not a whole year.
Of course, on the plus side, that means hockey is back on. :) We had Alec over last night to watch the Canadiens lose to Buffalo (after Janne Niinimaa guaranteed they'd win--smooth move), which was lots of fun. We have startlingly similar taste in books, too, which is cool. :) Also went out to a birthday party on Saturday that was a lot of fun. We don't stay out late very much anymore, so it was novel in that respect; we ended up hanging out in a neat little park with some friends until it got too cold.
Work is settling down a little bit again, aside from a minor crisis on Friday afternoon (why is it always Friday afternoon?) that I had to handle; it's been really busy lately, but at the moment I'm working on some estimates for the release after this, and it's hard to feel the same sense of urgency about that kind of thing. :) Tomorrow I'm supposed to take my work-provided pair of monitors in and exchange them for brand-new flat panels, which is cool. It certainly will give us back some of the dining room table--those 21" CRTs take up a lot of space. I should also be getting an IP-based phone this week, so I will no longer be tying up our phone line every morning for teleconferences. Which doesn't really matter to anyone but me (because I'll finally be able to hear everyone else in the meetings) and Jen (because she hates me tying up the phone), but hey. :-P
Nothing happening on the Ollie front. He's pretty active most days, which means Jen gets worried when he's not active, but he generally gives her a kick or two if she asks if he's OK. The class moves along; last week we simulated contractions (using ice cubes). It's all very interesting (actually, I'm finding it very useful to get a clearer picture of what my role will be, what kinds of things I will need to do and think about--I might be getting more out of it than Jen is, in some ways, although she does enjoy practicing the relaxation exercises).
Also I'm kind of getting the writing bug again for some reason. I might just ignore it until it goes away, I might not. It's been hard to start writing simply because the last time I did, I somehow managed to not save about 3/4 of what I wrote. I have the Word doc, it's just a lot... shorter than I remember it being. Which is frustrating, but I guess it's all still up in my head, so no great loss. Sometimes I think about trying to write and publish a novel or something, just to see if I could. And royalty checks (however small) certainly wouldn't suck. ;)
October 15, 2006
Not much to report lately. Jen and I have finished pretty much all the prep work for Ollie, so we're down to waiting; something neither of us are particularly good at. We've been to two of our birthing classes thus far--last week we watched videos of births, which I hadn't done since Health class in middle school. It strikes me as a little odd that people actually allow the filming of their baby's birth and the use of that footage in documentaries, although I guess I could just be a pretty private person. :-P
This was actually a really good weekend. Yesterday we re-re-re-(how many years have we lived here?)-did the front yard with some new plants, some new mulch, and compost (please come back to life, front yard!), then we went to the apartment of some friends of ours for awesome homemade sushi and tempura. And weird but amusing Canadian comedy shows (of course, we have a history with those). :)
Today was slower paced, but very nice. We lazed around with pancakes (and real Maple Syrup, thankyou Fi and Simon!) and the NYT, took a nap, and then I challenged Iron Chef Jenny (or vice versa) to Battle Chocolate Chip Cookie. I think it's a draw, which just means we have to do it again. ;)
So, that's pretty much it. Nothing else to report. I would give you hockey updates, but I'm not playing hockey, so... ;)
We're all fine, here, now--how are you? (Cookie for the reference.)
