(no subject)
... I mean, why not? I have a bit more time in my new job, I might as well have some fun with it.
To bring things up to speed:
Franklin's now two (birthday 7/5). He knows the alphabet (though he slurs his way thorough the end "now I know my..." part) and can count up to 18. He's a whiz at getting up and down stairs (good thing, there's a million of them in the house), and climbing in general. So far his feet are too small to wedge between the rails of his crib. Once they get a little wider, he'll have to move into a bed - the size of his feet being the only thing that keeps him in his crib at the moment. He has a tolerate/hate relationship, likely a by-product of jealousy, with his cousin, Alice, but we reamain hopeful that they'll be best of friends. Otherwise he plays pretty well with other kids. I missed it, but James tells me that once a kid knocked him down on a playground and Franklin laughed and got up. When the kid's parents scolded him for being mean and knocking Franklin down both kids ended up in tears. First their own child, and then mine in sympathy.
Also on the topic of Franklin, he's now being put in timeout, mostly for small ticket crimes like turning the AC on and off, and he hates it...
Perfect...
It seems to be sufficient for his age, and sllloooooowwly it works to deter him. It'll probably be foolproof by his fourteenth birthday. *lol*
James is James. Not much has changed on that count. He's pretty constant. He's still working for Alpha Software as a jack-of-all trades sort of guy.
Marriage-wise we're approaching our eighth anniversary of our wedding and the eleventh anniversary of our handfasting. Not a bad run. Sometimes it seems like much less time, and others it seems like forever, but that's pretty common I'd bet. I wish we could spend more time with our friends though. It's hard to arrange, with our being busy parents and everyone else either having too much on their plate or issues like transportation to coordinate well into what slots we have for company. Still, I can manage to hang out with friends at a bar or attend a party once in a blue moon, so that helps take the edge off.
Speaking of friends, Jon and Alysa are expecting their first child, Eric and Tesha now have two kids, and Jay and Rory have three. The first two matter, Rory and her brood can take a leap as that friendship has self destructed under the weight of too much crazy stuffed into one self centered lout (I'm talking about Rory here, not myself!). I miss having a single, female companion to connect with every day, but honestly the benefits didn't come close to matching the drawbacks. Upon some analysis of myself and the situation, I miss someone in the role, not her - which reflects poorly on me as well.
Ah well.
The job is pretty rad. I'm pleased to be here. I can go off and get hip deep into things around me that are interesting without feeling like I'm taking liberties. My ideas are heard and at least considered. I can work on things that I'm good at, not just whatever other people don't want to do, including events and promotions. I'm really happy here.
The house is likewise awesome. I can see us being there for ten years, easily. After that we might want to upgrade to something closer to the city in a less densely populated area. For now, I'm very happy. We have a new vinyl fence, the gutters are going up tomorrow and at the same time we're having some custom made baby gates installed on the back porch at the bottom and top of the stairs to make it completely child-safe. We have an awesome Weber grill (don't tell anyone that I admitted this, but they really are the best and ALMOST worth the price) and a new patio set - table and chairs to create a great lounging space. We've got some outdoor toys - everything from a water table shaped like a seashore with islands and bridges and an activity filled wading pool to a play house with a kitchen set and tool bench to go with it. I'm thinking that next year we'll get a play structure - something with swings, slides, and the like, maybe a "fort" space where kids can hang out and hide.
Also house related, I'm lagging in other areas - I really need to set up a better laundry room space - it'd be nice to be able to fold clothes down there. I also want to clean out the garage and office - they're largely dumping grounds and/or places for recyclables. I also need at least one, probably two, new bookcases. All on the to-do list along with buying bulbs for fall planting. I think I'm leaning toward blue, purple, and white for my color scheme. I already have a lovely purple lilac that's waiting for a hole to be dug - I expect some blooms next Spring!
The con is going well - we're following up on some exiting guests for next year. I'm constantly gratified and humbled that I get to continue to be the Con Chair or Co-Chair year after year. I've made so many good friends, I'm glad I jumped in and even more happy that I was given opportunities to expand my role. Anime Boston is getting so big, just like Franklin.
God willing, they'll both stop before they get too big to handle!
The family is good, though I don't see my sister Jackie very much, and my brother (still in the army) more than one or two times a year. My mom's health has been excellent (for her) for a long time, and I hope it will continue to be excellent. My dad had a couple of weird, short-term oddities, but in the end they turned out to go away on their own, so I can't really complain.
The cats continue to live despite themselves. Roo grows into a ponderous old rug of a cat for Franklin to sit on and Paxil continues to successfully dodge him altogether. Paxil sees assassins around every corner. It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic. I wonder what happened to him sometimes... He was a shelter cat, clearly some sort of victim, and a hard case, but he loves Roo so he's a perfect fit for us, being gone most of the day. They keep each other company, the two cats.
Health-wise? Meh, I don't want to talk about it. :(
Instead... secret time, though I've lost some weight recently, today I was so, so bad! I ate nothing but chocolate. That's it, chocolate and nothing else! It was wonderful!
Breakfast? Chocolate.
Lunch? Chocolate.
Dinner, well I'll be good, but only because I'm sick of chocolate. :P
I'm taking half a week off 8/12 - 8/15 to watch the boy-child to free up my mom to get her kitchen redone (so JEALOUS, while I have no gripes about my kitchen, since it's brand new I'd LOVE to pull out some of the rugs, also new, but uhg, I mean rugs are gross when you COULD have bamboo flooring!). We'll probably make a trip to Canobie Lake or somesuch if I can find someone to take the day with me. Otherwise we'll frequent the parks and pools roundabout.
Other than that I'm taking a REAL vacation the last week of October. We'll be going to the timeshare for seven glorious days in the Berkshires. Walks in miles and miles of forests, splashing in the streams, and visiting outdoor shrines will be meshed with lounging in the hot-tub (we might get a unit with one in the bathroom, but otherwise there's the big one in the lodge), shopping at the outlets, sleeping, star gazing and NOT doing anything terribly taxing. I might bring a laptop to do some work-stuff, but then again, maybe not. :P We'll have James lappy, but you can't play online games together on one computer, so maybe that's the REAL reason I'd think about taking a work machine with us.
AAAAAAANNNNND we might have a babysitter the weekend after this one so I may have a date night to look forward to!
To bring things up to speed:
Franklin's now two (birthday 7/5). He knows the alphabet (though he slurs his way thorough the end "now I know my..." part) and can count up to 18. He's a whiz at getting up and down stairs (good thing, there's a million of them in the house), and climbing in general. So far his feet are too small to wedge between the rails of his crib. Once they get a little wider, he'll have to move into a bed - the size of his feet being the only thing that keeps him in his crib at the moment. He has a tolerate/hate relationship, likely a by-product of jealousy, with his cousin, Alice, but we reamain hopeful that they'll be best of friends. Otherwise he plays pretty well with other kids. I missed it, but James tells me that once a kid knocked him down on a playground and Franklin laughed and got up. When the kid's parents scolded him for being mean and knocking Franklin down both kids ended up in tears. First their own child, and then mine in sympathy.
Also on the topic of Franklin, he's now being put in timeout, mostly for small ticket crimes like turning the AC on and off, and he hates it...
Perfect...
It seems to be sufficient for his age, and sllloooooowwly it works to deter him. It'll probably be foolproof by his fourteenth birthday. *lol*
James is James. Not much has changed on that count. He's pretty constant. He's still working for Alpha Software as a jack-of-all trades sort of guy.
Marriage-wise we're approaching our eighth anniversary of our wedding and the eleventh anniversary of our handfasting. Not a bad run. Sometimes it seems like much less time, and others it seems like forever, but that's pretty common I'd bet. I wish we could spend more time with our friends though. It's hard to arrange, with our being busy parents and everyone else either having too much on their plate or issues like transportation to coordinate well into what slots we have for company. Still, I can manage to hang out with friends at a bar or attend a party once in a blue moon, so that helps take the edge off.
Speaking of friends, Jon and Alysa are expecting their first child, Eric and Tesha now have two kids, and Jay and Rory have three. The first two matter, Rory and her brood can take a leap as that friendship has self destructed under the weight of too much crazy stuffed into one self centered lout (I'm talking about Rory here, not myself!). I miss having a single, female companion to connect with every day, but honestly the benefits didn't come close to matching the drawbacks. Upon some analysis of myself and the situation, I miss someone in the role, not her - which reflects poorly on me as well.
Ah well.
The job is pretty rad. I'm pleased to be here. I can go off and get hip deep into things around me that are interesting without feeling like I'm taking liberties. My ideas are heard and at least considered. I can work on things that I'm good at, not just whatever other people don't want to do, including events and promotions. I'm really happy here.
The house is likewise awesome. I can see us being there for ten years, easily. After that we might want to upgrade to something closer to the city in a less densely populated area. For now, I'm very happy. We have a new vinyl fence, the gutters are going up tomorrow and at the same time we're having some custom made baby gates installed on the back porch at the bottom and top of the stairs to make it completely child-safe. We have an awesome Weber grill (don't tell anyone that I admitted this, but they really are the best and ALMOST worth the price) and a new patio set - table and chairs to create a great lounging space. We've got some outdoor toys - everything from a water table shaped like a seashore with islands and bridges and an activity filled wading pool to a play house with a kitchen set and tool bench to go with it. I'm thinking that next year we'll get a play structure - something with swings, slides, and the like, maybe a "fort" space where kids can hang out and hide.
Also house related, I'm lagging in other areas - I really need to set up a better laundry room space - it'd be nice to be able to fold clothes down there. I also want to clean out the garage and office - they're largely dumping grounds and/or places for recyclables. I also need at least one, probably two, new bookcases. All on the to-do list along with buying bulbs for fall planting. I think I'm leaning toward blue, purple, and white for my color scheme. I already have a lovely purple lilac that's waiting for a hole to be dug - I expect some blooms next Spring!
The con is going well - we're following up on some exiting guests for next year. I'm constantly gratified and humbled that I get to continue to be the Con Chair or Co-Chair year after year. I've made so many good friends, I'm glad I jumped in and even more happy that I was given opportunities to expand my role. Anime Boston is getting so big, just like Franklin.
God willing, they'll both stop before they get too big to handle!
The family is good, though I don't see my sister Jackie very much, and my brother (still in the army) more than one or two times a year. My mom's health has been excellent (for her) for a long time, and I hope it will continue to be excellent. My dad had a couple of weird, short-term oddities, but in the end they turned out to go away on their own, so I can't really complain.
The cats continue to live despite themselves. Roo grows into a ponderous old rug of a cat for Franklin to sit on and Paxil continues to successfully dodge him altogether. Paxil sees assassins around every corner. It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic. I wonder what happened to him sometimes... He was a shelter cat, clearly some sort of victim, and a hard case, but he loves Roo so he's a perfect fit for us, being gone most of the day. They keep each other company, the two cats.
Health-wise? Meh, I don't want to talk about it. :(
Instead... secret time, though I've lost some weight recently, today I was so, so bad! I ate nothing but chocolate. That's it, chocolate and nothing else! It was wonderful!
Breakfast? Chocolate.
Lunch? Chocolate.
Dinner, well I'll be good, but only because I'm sick of chocolate. :P
I'm taking half a week off 8/12 - 8/15 to watch the boy-child to free up my mom to get her kitchen redone (so JEALOUS, while I have no gripes about my kitchen, since it's brand new I'd LOVE to pull out some of the rugs, also new, but uhg, I mean rugs are gross when you COULD have bamboo flooring!). We'll probably make a trip to Canobie Lake or somesuch if I can find someone to take the day with me. Otherwise we'll frequent the parks and pools roundabout.
Other than that I'm taking a REAL vacation the last week of October. We'll be going to the timeshare for seven glorious days in the Berkshires. Walks in miles and miles of forests, splashing in the streams, and visiting outdoor shrines will be meshed with lounging in the hot-tub (we might get a unit with one in the bathroom, but otherwise there's the big one in the lodge), shopping at the outlets, sleeping, star gazing and NOT doing anything terribly taxing. I might bring a laptop to do some work-stuff, but then again, maybe not. :P We'll have James lappy, but you can't play online games together on one computer, so maybe that's the REAL reason I'd think about taking a work machine with us.
AAAAAAANNNNND we might have a babysitter the weekend after this one so I may have a date night to look forward to!