Busy September

It's been a busy month. We've gotten new windows, 2 exterior doors, siding, exterior lights, ripped up the baby's room carpet to expose the hardwood underneath, my father-in-law has painted that room, got plumbing in the basement changed including removal of the 1958 concrete sink, had the exterior drain cleaned out, gone out west to Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Kootenay and Calgary, had the microwave die and replaced, worked on closing my business totally down, and probably a couple of more things that I'm forgetting.

Today Laura is 31 weeks, 4 days and I'm just wondering how we're going to be able to take care of another person. Doing all the above stuff, it goes through my head "how would any of this be possible with a baby? I have a hard enough time taking care of myself"

Now Laura wants to rip up the carpet on the other 2 rooms and repaint them. Oh, and we'll have to look into getting more things like a car seat and a crib. I missed the honeymoon trimester in which I was supposed to get everything done. Oie.

I really don't know how other people do it, but pretty soon I think that I'm going to find out.

Prestidigitator

I always like the titles people choose in IM at work. Mine is "prestidigitator", mostly because it's a pretty obscure word from some forgotten novel that I read in highschool. I'm blogging this because there isn't any way that I can remember how to spell it, and at best the key word that I can figure out is "magician".

Perspective

When speaking to Laura's 90 year old grandmother the other day she was talking about this young person that had just died and how sad it was. How early. I didn't realize at first she was talking about someone who was 71. I guess so much depends on your certain point of view.

Imax iCal is at an end

My little side project that I used to scrap a site and build a usable ical file is at an end. I mentioned it just in May but now it totally broken because they have totally revamped their website.

They still have not provided an ical format that I can use in my phone, but the info on the site is usable enough that it's not worth my effort at this time to scrape and reformat. It was fun and I learned a bunch, but it's now time to disable it. I'll make the source view-able for interest's sake.

BBQ Roast

Tonight I tried something that I've wanted to try for quite a while: making a roast on the BBQ. It went quite well - roast on the top rack, potatoes under to collect any drippings. Mmmm... I have a fantasy sometimes of having an outdoor kitchen (including sinks) where a BBQ would be my oven for most things. Cleanup would be minimal since it would be outside. No smoke detectors to set off. My only experience with outdoor kitchens is that you have watch for scarlet macaws that steal spice containers.

Perhaps one day. Perhaps.

Dot, blip, baby

When Laura told me that she thought that she was pregnant it was weird - a floating realization that didn't seem to have sunk in. The first ultrasound was along those lines as well. "Hey, see that dot there? That will be a baby". Strange and abstract. The next ultrasound was like that too "Hey, see that pulsing blip there? That will be a baby". I felt like I was sort of missing something. I knew in my head that dot would become a baby and that our lives would change, but that knowledge felt like water and my brain was the ducks back. It just wouldn't stick.

The ultasound after that was very different. That was where it now looked like a baby. There was a beating heart, head, arms, legs, movement. I felt like someone had made a brick of emotions, dropped it into a sock and hit me upside the head with it. Excitement, fear, happiness, gratitude. Now it felt like it started to sink in and feel real. I find it simply amazing how quickly things can go from a dot to a blip to a baby. Our baby.

A good evening

It's been a good evening. Saw a robot action movie (transformers 3), with lots of tie-ins / references to other sci fi (Firefly and Star Trek), followed by a drive home in a freshly washed car, under the stars and a full moon, saw someone on an over-sized unicycle, while listening to Gnarls Barkley and then the Indiana Jones soundtrack. That, in one long run on sentence, are a few things that made me smile tonight. The others of course being Laura and my Earl Grey, hot.