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Journal Entry: June 8, 2009

Thursday
Last Thursday night we had D– over to babysit AB so T– and I could go out on a date. When we started trying to decide where to go for dinner, though, we both thought pizza sounded best, so we just ordered in and shared with D– and AB. Then he took her outside to play and we went shopping.

I’ve been looking for new short sleeve dress shirts to wear to work, and T– has been looking for maternity dresses for the summer. We hit Old Navy, then Gordman’s, then Best Buy (which was a total bust), and then Wal-Mart where T– finally found some stuff she liked. I also hit the snowcone stand for a Tiger’s Blood, and filled up the car for T–.

We got home after nine, but AB was still awake and in crisis mode. She couldn’t find her white pacifier. She had the orange one, but she needed the white one, too. We had no luck finding it, but I got her distracted enough that she finally forgot about it and fell asleep.

Friday
Friday morning I stuck around the house long enough to have breakfast with T– and AB before they got on the road. They spent the weekend down in Texas, going to my aunt’s birthday party in Houston (with a scheduled stop in Dallas to spend some time with my grandma. I stayed home and went to work.

I met D– for lunch, then in the afternoon I got a haircut, grabbed some snacks and drinks for our party, and even got started wiring the new office. We had put in network and cable connections in the old office closet to set up a distribution point for our router and cable modem. When we switched AB’s room and the office, though, it became inconvenient to have to go in there to deal with networking issues.

So my project for the weekend was to move the two existing network connections and the cable connection from the old office closet to the new one, and add a new network and cable connection on the wall in the new office. I also decided to install a new electrical outlet in the new closet, because I had much easier access to the wall in this closet than I’d had in the other one.

Friday afternoon I didn’t get much of it done, but I did find the locations for the two junction boxes in the closet and cut the holes in the wall. I also got in the attic for a few minutes to scout out the setup up there, and that was awful. I hate working in the attic.

After that I had to call it quits and get cleaned up because we had our June Poker Night scheduled to take advantage of the wives and kids being out of town (my sister took her family down to the same birthday party). We met at their house, and K–, D–, and B– joined us. N– came over for dinner, too, and they brought us Steve’s Rib, which is currently my favorite barbecue. It was awesome.

We watched some Simpsons and Family Guy, and then most of the original Batman movie, and then more Family Guy. Oh, and we played some Texas Hold ‘Em. I won out, but then B– beat me when we switched to Blackjack. Ah well. It was a fun night.

Saturday
Saturday I got up around eight because I knew my plans for the day involved attic time and I wanted to get to it before it got really hot. K– came over to help out while N– went shopping for baby clothes nearby, so I put him to work on the electrical outlets while I finished setting up the network connections, then finally (and reluctantly) went up into the attic to drill a hole and feed the two new connections down the wall.

Turns out our air conditioner is situated directly over the office wall. It took me about half an hour to figure that out, searching with my fingertips under the mountains of insulation to try to find the top cap — trying to guess distances based on the paltry landmarks up there — K– finally had to come up to help and we found a spot about eight inches long in which I could place the drop. Anything to the north of that would have been in the living room, and anything to the south was trapped under hundreds of pounds of sheet metal and blower fans.

Then I finally got to do the actual work, and that only took a few minutes. I put the hole through the cap, K– went down and cut the square out of the drywall (and I could immediately see the light from the room below), and then I fed the cables down until he could pull them through into the office.

All told I spent more than an hour up in the attic, crouched and supporting my weight on the narrow edges of two-by-fours. Once I got back down into the office, it was just a matter of terminating ends, plugging them into faceplates, and cleaning up. We did about half of that, tested out all the connections we’d made (except the cable modem connection, it turned out), and then ran up to Panera to meet D– for lunch. That was about noon, and I was completely exhausted.

After lunch, though, I had plans. I’d been supposed to meet Toby for some programming last Saturday afternoon, while I was in charge of AB, but I’d postponed that because I thought she was sick and didn’t want to fight with her all afternoon. So this Saturday I got home from lunch, grabbed my laptop, and then jumped in the car to head to Norman.

It was fun. We spent the afternoon modeling furniture for a game we’re going to make AB, and while we were at it he turned on Madagascar II for the kids. I’d never seen it, so I paid about as much attention to that as to the work he was doing. Both were pretty entertaining. His wife got home around five and we had an Asian pot roast for supper that was awesome, and then Toby and I went to see Star Trek, which she’d gone to see without him earlier in the week.

It was great on a second viewing. Definitely one worth watching on the big screen. Toby really enjoyed it, too. We got back to his house around nine and spent a few more minutes talking before I headed home. I got in at about ten, totally exhausted and quite ready for bed.

Then I spent six hours playing computer games.

That wasn’t actually as accidental as it sounds. On the drive home I called D– and invited him over for some multiplayer Civ, deciding in a casual, off-hand way that I could sleep for half the day Sunday, skipping church in the process. So D– met me at the house, and we took three tries to get a game set up right, and then we were off and running.

I did discover, while I was waiting for him to prosecute a war against the Incas, that my internet connection was down. Our network connection was fine, but there was no link to the outside world. I restarted the cable modem, and then got back to the game. An hour later it finally had a connection, and that one stayed live (but weak) for the rest of the night.

I finally went to bed a little after four, looking forward to a really, really late morning.

Sunday
So T– called me five hours later, discovered I was asleep, and graciously agreed to call back later. I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, though, so I got up, cleaned up, and went to church after all. The sermon was a pretty good one, and I got some writing done on the next Ghost Targets book, so in the end I’m glad of the way the morning turned out. I was really dragging all day, though.

After church K– and N– invited us over for a cookout (specifically hot dogs and brats), and that was delicious. Then D– and I went back to the house to finish our game of Civ. I took a stab at fixing my internet connection first, by reterminating the input cable. When I hooked it back up it wouldn’t connect, though, same as the night before. We went ahead and started playing our game.

Half an hour later I checked on it again and it finally had a connection, and this time it was fantastic. We played all day, stopping only to order a pizza around six, and at about eleven we found ourselves master of half the world, with three nations our vassals and modern armies capable of annihilating any opposition already in transports headed for the other hemisphere, when England suddenly and unexpectedly won a cultural victory. Lame!

We left it at that, though. D– headed home, and I spent a little while getting the house cleaned up for T–‘s return. I finished off the network connection in the office, vaccuumed up all the drywall dust from all the wall-carving we’d done, cleaned out the trash, loaded and ran the dishwasher, dragged the garbage out to the curb for an early pickup, and then finally crashed in bed after midnight.

The weekend was equal parts productive and awesome. There’s very little overlap between those two, but the total is one I’m pretty happy with. I’m looking forward to T– and AB getting home this afternoon, though. Even busy as I was, I found plenty of time to miss them.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: June 4, 2009

Last night after work I got a Father’s Day present — T– picked up a couple new shirts for me from Kohl’s. They were really nice, and I immediately changed into the blue one. (Yes, blue.) Then I ran up to Lowe’s to buy a couple bags of play sand for T–‘s safari-themed Wednesday night Bible class. I met her at the church, we dumped the sand, and then raced over to Arby’s to meet everyone for dinner.

“Everyone” in this case was D– and K– and N–. We had our sandwiches, then we took advantage of the Pick 5 menu to get a round of turnovers for dessert. Delicious!

Then most of us went to church, while D– took me back to my house and dropped me off. He went home to sleep, having spent an exhausting night the evening previous chasing down problems for work.

I got my bad hard drive ready to send back to NewEgg, cleaned up the office and AB’s room a little bit, and then just had time to sit down for a minute before T– got home from church, followed shortly by K– and N– who wanted to check out the new nursery and office.

They were appropriately admiring, and then after they left we put AB to bed, then sat down in the living room to some Conan and Fallon. Both were good, although both were plagued with connectivity issues. I think Cox might be lashing out at me for threatening to cancel my account last week.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: June 3, 2009

Yesterday after work I hung new curtains in AB’s room and spent about forty minutes cursing at the register and vent covers I had to hang in the ceiling. I hate those things. Finally got it done, though, and most of my pending work for the nursery is done now.

T– grilled up some hot dogs for dinner and D– came over to join in. Then I spent some time getting the HTPC set up with the new Hulu Desktop software, which is pretty slick. It took a while to get it programmed to respond properly to my Harmony remote, but now that it does it’s awesome.

Then we watched some Conan and some Jimmy Fallon while I played Civ and T– and D– both worked on work stuff. Then it was midnight.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: June 2, 2009

It always surprises me to get that email from Facebook saying “Such-and-such confirmed you as a friend.” Usually that’s because of the “such-and-such” in question — mostly people I vaguely remember from high school who apparently remember me well enough to confirm. Weird.

I spent the weekend watching AB while T– was out of town, so you can anticipate a long and detailed blog post.

Thursday
Thursday afternoon I got home from work a little early so that I could say goodbye to T– before she headed to Little Rock for a weekend scrapbooking with my mom and sisters. We got the car loaded, and then she tearfully took to the road.

I played with AB for half an hour or so, until she started claiming she was hungry, and then I made us dinner — PB and J for her, and PF and Changs for me (leftovers, that is). Then we were heading back to her room to play some more when she asked if we could go in the office (like the cats, she loves it simply because the door is always closed).

So I dragged T–‘s desk chair in there, squeezed it in next to mine at the desk, and put VeggieTales on the new big monitor. AB watched TV while I played Civ on the laptop. It was a fun hour and a half. After I put her to bed, I played some more Civ, and then went to bed at a reasonable hour (something I have difficulty remembering to do when I’m home alone).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep. I was awake until about 2:00 before I finally drifted off.

Friday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through work on Friday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door, loudly and insistently, while politely asking to be released. I could barely hear her through the banging, saying, “Let me out, please.”

I went to her door and told her she didn’t have to go to back to bed, but she had to stay in her room until 7:00. She didn’t like that information, but there’s not a lot she can do about it until she figures out child-proof doorknob covers.

So I hurried to get dressed and ready for work before 7:00, and then got AB fed before the babysitter showed up. Once she was there I rushed out the door and headed to work.

I got home a little after 5:00, and on the drive there I called up D– and K– and N–, as well as my brother-in-law who had his own two little bundles of joy in his sole care. In an effort to pool resources, we all met at McDonalds in Edmond and let the kids unleash their havoc on the play equipment there.

At one point AB and her cousin Sophy were fighting over a toy steering wheel and AB bit her hard, right on the chest (bizarre, I know). Jeff retrieved Sophy to comfort her and I got AB to chastise her, and as I was carrying her to a corner AB said, “Sophy’s crying.”

In my sternest dad voice I said, “She is. Do you know why?”

And AB nodded and said, “Annabelle tried to eat her.”

I didn’t laugh. Not at the time anyway.

We were there for an hour or so, then fled the noise of the place to regroup at my sister’s place for another half hour or so. I finally left at 8:00 so I could get home in time to put AB down to bed. D– came over, too.

Once she was in bed, D– made me watch King of Kong on Netflix while we played games in the office. When it was over, I retaliated by making him watch about three hours of Comedy Central Presents. It was 2:00 when he finally left and I went to bed.

Saturday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through the morning Saturday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.

We had breakfast and played some games in the living room, but she mostly divided her time between throwing weird little tantrums (falling on the ground wherever she was and crying softly), and crawling into my lap and cuddling up against me like she does when she’s scared. Or, more precisely, she spent the morning acting like she was sick. She’d spent the week playing with her cousin who we found out on Thursday probably had strep, so I was more and more certain as the morning wore on that AB had finally come down with it.

I had some errands that needed run, though, so I went up to Wal-Mart and AB perked up a little bit when she saw the fish in the tanks. She fought me a lot over who got to push the cart, though, and I learned the low-grade terror that is trying to keep track of a toddler at a busy Wal-Mart — especially with the sure knowledge that, if she decides to run, she can outrun you. She never actually bolted, but there were a couple of close calls.

We got what we needed, though, and then swung by B– and E–‘s place to borrow an extension ladder. I was supposed to take AB over to Toby’s place for the afternoon, so she could play with his kids while we did some programming. When she started throwing a fit in the car, though, I called him up and told him I was worried she was sick and she wasn’t behaving, and I just didn’t have the patience to deal with that all afternoon. He seemed to understand.

D– picked up some lunch for us, and then I put her down for a nap. I got some work done in the back yard, using B–‘s ladder to repair the broken swings, and then D– and I started up a multiplayer game of Civ. Around 3:30 AB woke up and came into the office, but all she did for about forty minutes was wander around crying. She didn’t want to be comforted, she didn’t want to watch any of her favorite TV shows or movies, she didn’t want a snack or a drink…she just cried. I checked her for a fever, but there was nothing. T– had told me she’d behaved like that earlier in the week, so we just waited it out.

I did call and cancel dinner plans with K– and N–, but after AB calmed down and I started trying to figure out what to make her for dinner, I called back and uncancelled. By the time we got over there, AB was perfectly fine, and she behaved pretty well while we were there. N– tried to put on The Fox and the Hound for her, but AB was much more interested in playing with baby Jason.

We stayed a little longer than I’d thought AB would allow, so it was forty minutes past her bedtime by the time we got home. I decided to postpone her bath, and just put her to bed. Then D– and I played Civ for three more hours, and got up to Cannons. We finished one war and he wisely suggested we call it a night before starting another. Thanks to that suggestion, I made it to bed by the comparably reasonable hour of 1:00.

Sunday
Tired as I was, I probably would have slept through church Sunday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.

I gave her some breakfast and turned on WordWorld for her, then I got cleaned up and dressed in a hurry. Then I gave her a much needed bath, and just finished getting her dressed in time to make it to Bible class.

At first she was really clingy, and knowing she’d been through a rough weekend without her mama I stuck around until the opportunity to ring a bell and the promise of goldfish crackers finally enticed her to take her spot at the table. Then I slipped off to the auditorium class only ten or fifteen minutes late.

Jeff joined us for the service, bringing his two girls with him, and we spent a few minutes commiserating. That went like this:

Me (exhausted): They are never allowed to do this again.
Jeff (unsympathetic): You’ve only got one!

Afterward we went to Mazzio’s with K– and N– and D– joined us there. Then after lunch AB went down for a nap, I cleaned up the house a little anticipating T–‘s return, and then D– and I finished off our Civ game. We won it just before T– got home with dinner.

There were hugs all around, of course, and then while T– and AB were catching up I took a moment to finish some of the work on the nursery/office switch. Then AB went down for a nap, and T– and I spent a couple hours watching TV before heading to bed.

Monday
Monday I had to go back to work, dang it all. I even ended up staying late, so it was almost six by the time I got home, and then I spent an hour on the elliptical machine. At seven T– had dinner ready for us — barbecue sandwiches, which were fantastic. Then we took a walk up to the Bolings’ house — friends from church — and spent a while talking with them. By the time we got home it was AB’s bedtime, but she stayed up a while longer to get a bath.

After that, T– and I spent the rest of the evening watching through the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien transition episodes. That was pretty fun. Then I stayed up late playing Civ, but with T– back home and my life back in order, “late” was only 11:30.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 28, 2009

I worked a little bit late yesterday, but still got home with enough time to do a short stint on the elliptical while checking out my new monitor. I played an episode of Comedy Central Presents, and watching TV on this screen is so much better than watching it on the laptop monitor was.

Then we rushed off to meet D– for dinner at El Chico. Afterward T– took AB to church, and I headed up to Books A Million to meet my little sister for a discussion of the Ghost Targets series (which she had just finished).

It was a fantastic discussion, and took a good portion of three hours. I’ve been feeling more and more anxious to write the third book in the series lately, but I’ve been trying to fight down the urge because I just have too much to do. I don’t think my resistance will last long, though. You can probably expect a review copy by mid-July.

Anyway, I got home around ten, and ended up playing Civ for an hour or so, with more Comedy Central Presents on the second monitor. That was fun, too. I’m definitely glad of that purchase.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 27, 2009

I’ve got an eventful five-day recap, so prepare your scrolling finger!

Err….

Thursday
Last Thursday was the 21st, so I did another 24-hour fast. Much easier than the first, because I had a really good idea exactly what to expect. I’d considered going for a 36-hour this time, but decided not to because I had work to do, and going all evening without eating would have just put me in a bitter, useless mood. I guess overcoming that is really the point of the ordeal. I’ll have to work on it in the future.

I did get some work done, though. Moved all my computer stuff out of the old office and into the new one, and started working out the new layout. We also got a good start on arranging the stuff in the old office to get it ready for painting.

Friday
Friday was my RDO, and I put it to good use. I woke up early and started gathering the painting supplies. In the old office we’d painted the ceiling and doors a light grey, all the woodwork a dark, dark grey, and the walls dark green. The goal was to take the woodwork (and doors) back to the same flat white in the rest of the house, the walls to the same light green we had in AB’s nursery, and then the ceiling to the tan color on the walls in the rest of the house. For the most part, that meant taking very dark shades and painting over them with very pale shades. Luckily we’d been through that process once before, when we last got the Tulsa house ready to sell, and learned that primer really does work.

So we started Friday morning with the woodwork, got it all primed, let that dry, and then put the white on. While that was still drying, I started putting up primer on the walls, but I only got two of them done before I ran out of paint. I waited half an hour for the first wall to dry, and then got a coat of the light green up, and used up all of that that we had leftover, too.

That was most of what I hoped to accomplish on Friday anyway, and I ran out of paint at the same time I ran out of day off, which is to say about three in the afternoon. I got cleaned up and then made a trip to Byron’s Liquor Warehouse to stock up for our party that night.

Friday was our second Poker Night, and we spent it playing Heroscape instead. We had five there this time, including the same group from last time plus Toby, and I think we all had a pretty good time. B– wrote mid-week, in response to my final email saying that the party would be on Friday, to say he could come any night but Friday. We all took it for a joke, but it turned out he really meant it. Hopefully he’ll make the June meeting, though.

Anyway, we officially broke at midnight, but then a few of us stuck around talking for a bit, and after everyone cleared out I cleaned up the mess and finished off my last Tatoo and Redbull, and it was around 1:30 when I finally went to bed and realized I had just slammed half of a Tatoo and Redbull. Ugh.

Saturday
Still, Saturday came around in spite of me. I got up around 7:30 (at the insistence of my delightful little daughter) and then T– took her away for her own safety to do some garage saleing, while I got started on the room.

I was about halfway through putting primer on one of the two remaining walls when B– showed up to lend a hand. Mindful of my sore back (and my weekend’s work did nothing to help with that) he graciously offered to do the hardest work (specifically, the ceiling), so I handed over a roller to him and got to work on some edging.

I also rigged a laptop and some speakers to play King Baby, Jim Gaffigan’s latest stuff, while we worked. That was pretty awesome.

Essentially, before B– offered to come over, my goal for Saturday was to get the primer up before lunch, then do the walls in the early afternoon and hope that I still had the time and energy to do the ceiling before bed. With his help, we got it all primed and then both walls and half of the ceiling done before lunchtime. It was incredible.

I ate and then T– came in to do the trim work while I finished off the ceiling, and by mid-afternoon the painting was done. AB woke up from her nap and the two of them went out to play in the yard while I swapped out stuff from the closet. We also moved a ton of AB’s furniture from our room into AB’s new room, which was nice to get done.

Sometime in the midst of that we went out to dinner with my sister’s family at Taco Cabana, and afterward we brought her two girls back to the house to play with AB while they (my sister and her husband) went to Lowe’s. So obviously it was a busy and exhausting day.

Sunday
Sunday after church we went to K– and N–‘s for a delicious quiche lorraine sans oignons (or something like that). AB behaved really well, and it was a perfectly pleasant visit. It’s weird to think how little time we’ve spent over there since the baby was born, but that probably has as much to do with it being the football offseason as it does with parenthood. I’ll guess we’ll find out in September.

Anyway, we went home and AB went down for a nap and so did I. I actually crashed on the couch, then ended up on the floor somehow, and only really woke up when I heard T– closing the garage door on her way to Wal-Mart for groceries. I was just talking myself into getting up and going to my bed when the phone rang. It was Dad, calling about some comments I’d sent him regarding his novel. We talked for right at an hour, discussing his book in specific and writing in general.

Then he got off the phone at the same time T– got home and AB woke up from her nap. They went outside to play again, but not before T– gave me more work to do. She told me to take care of dinner.

So, an hour later, I ran up to P F Chang’s to pick up our order.

D– came over to join us for supper, and brought back a bunch of my computer games that he’d borrowed and finished a while back, so after we ate I spent the evening installing games and got caught up in a Civ game that took up a lot of my time over the next three days. It pretty much ate my whole evening, anyway, but I did take time to fix a loose hinge on one of our cabinet doors in the kitchen. So I did accomplish something on Sunday. I was up until 2:00 playing, though.

Monday
Monday morning I woke up around 9:30 and mowed the lawn, then got cleaned up in time to head over to my sister’s place with T– and AB for a Memorial Day party. A real crowd showed up in, and instead of flooding this page with even more dashes I’ll let you look at T–‘s or my sister’s blog for more details and prettier pictures.

I played a Magic game with Toby and my brother-in-law before social pressure forced us to put it away. Then I spent some time outside in the accursed sunlight until T– requested a snowcone and Toby and my brother-in-law and I all fled the party to see if we could find an open stand. We picked up seven snowcones and brought them back to much rejoicing.

I don’t really remember much else from Monday, but that’s probably because I spent the rest of the day fighting off Vikings and Frenchmen with a horde of Mechanized Infantry. I won.

Tuesday
Tuesday morning I woke up too sore to get out of bed, and eventually talked myself into skipping work. I finally got out of bed sometime between nine and ten, and watched AB while T– ran some errands. Then we had some lunch, and I went to my office to work on some of my old poetry stuff while AB took a nap. Around three she woke up and I agreed to watch her again while T– went grocery shopping.

We had some fantastic pot roast for supper, and we were just getting ready to play AB’s memory game when UPS rang the doorbell to drop off some new computer stuff. I got a couple UPSs to protect my equipment from our frequent power outages, a new hard drive for my fileserver (which seems to be dead on arrival), and a new monitor to use as a TV in my office. It’s beautiful.

I got it all unboxed, then sat down at the kitchen table with T– and AB to play memory. She has a bunch of cards with Disney characters on them, and we narrowed the seventy-two cards down to a more reasonable twelve, and played the traditional memory game with AB. She’s far more interested in placing the cards in the plastic storage tray than in actually matching, probably because the motor skills present her with a real challenge. She has no trouble at all remembering where the cards are.

We went through through the six-card game several times, with slightly different sets, and then came up with a more complicated version using the storage tray and twelve cards, and she excelled at that, too. We were so impressed that T– pulled out the camcorder to get a record of AB’s ability, but by then she was tired of the game and decided to argue instead of showing off. Alas.

We put the game away, then, and I went to the office to work on my computer. I spent about an hour trying to get an old hard drive to work (only to discover it was a bad drive), and finally gave up on that and just installed my new drive (only to discover it, too, was a bad drive). When that was done, I put it back in the top of AB’s closet, and then tucked her in and wished her goodnight.

Then I spent another half hour rearranging the entertainment center in the living room to install a UPS there, and finally sat down on the couch to watch the second half of Charade with T–. That’s one weird-ass movie.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 21, 2009

Yesterday after work I rushed home to get started on more work.

Instead of exercising for the day, I toiled. T– had cleared off a bookcase for me during the day, so I dragged the empty bookcase from the old office into the new one, found a space for it on the wall, and then made a bunch of trips (with T–‘s help) carrying books from one of the full bookcases in there, clearing it off in the process.

That worked pretty well, and I think we moved the second bookcase in there before dinner. We got them both set up in the back corner and fully loaded. Then we darted up to McDonalds to grab something for AB before meeting my sister and her family, D–, and K– and N– at Quiznos.

I’ve never been a big fan, but I always try to get the Quiznos version of my favorite sandwiches from other places. That, or something weird. Last night we split the classic club, and that was better than anything I’ve had there. Delicious.

Afterward D– drove me back to the house, and I put him to work. We dismantled AB’s bed (in her room) and the futon (in the old office), and swapped rooms. Then, once the futon was reassembled in the new office, D– asked about my plans for the eventual layout and immediately suggested we could probably do something better with the bookcases. Turned out he was right, but to prove it we had to go ahead and move the desk, which wasn’t really ready for that.

We did it anyway, and once the desk was in place there was clearly enough room beside it to put the bookcases there (on the inside corner instead of the outside one), which freed up the back corner for just the elliptical. There’d been enough room as it was, but it was cramped. This works a lot better.

It meant clearing off the bookcases again, moving them along the wall, and then reloading them. It was also a pretty significant chore to get the elliptical taken apart and moved, and we had to find places for the rest of AB’s stuff in our bedroom, to keep the old office clean enough that we can paint it over the weekend.

Anyway, that was my whole evening. I’ve got all the furniture moved into the new office, though, and I think I’m going to take a stab at wiring it tonight. I had lots of time to think about that while I lay in bed last night, because I couldn’t sleep at all. I went to bed at 10:30 and it was after midnight before I fell asleep, and only fitful rest after that. Ugh.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 20, 2009

Is it the twentieth already? Ugh.

Yesterday after work I did forty minutes on the elliptical and finished off the first season of Dollhouse, which ended fantastically. I’m really looking forward to seeing where they go with the story (and, in the same vein, really stoked to learn that they are renewing it).

Then after that we had steaks for dinner, and then started the process of moving AB out of her room. We brought all her toys and most of her furniture out of her room and set them up in the back corner of our living room as a temporary play area.

Our goal is to swap the nursery and the library, and put both kids in the larger room. It’s a temporary fix, but it should buy us a few years.

Unfortunately, it’s no small task. In addition to all the furniture that needs to get moved, the office is done up in my personal color scheme (which is to say, dark), and T– thinks it would be bad for the children’s psyches to grow up that environment, so we get to repaint them to happy meadow green and white. I did a pretty thorough job when I painted it in the first place, so that’s a lot of work to take it back.

And, as I implied above, I figure I’ve only got a few years left of having an office at all, so I’m not going to bother repainting the smaller room. I’ll just leave it happy meadow green and hope it doesn’t get on my nerves too much when the only light in the room comes from a computer monitor.

We’ll have to move the network equipment and fileserver out of the old office closet, to protect it from curious little hands, and we’ll need to drop cable and network connections in the new office because there was no need to have them in that room when it was a nursery. That’s an unpleasant afternoon’s work, but not much more.

Anyway, last night all we did was move AB’s toys out to the living room, and then I started the process of condensing my library down from three bookcases to two, because that’s all I’ll have room for. It wasn’t quite as painful as I’d expected it to be, but it’s still a bummer.

Of course, by the time I went to bed I was still working out details and planning exactly what needed to be done, and it was hours before I actually fell asleep. That was irritating.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 19, 2009

Yesterday I finally got a Google Profile built for Aaron Pogue. There’s a basketball player of the same name who was some sort of phenomenon in high school, so this is the first time typing my name into Google has ever revealed a single result related to me. (I’m right there at the very bottom of the first page, and it’s just my Google Profile).

I have grand plans for my personal website, but web design sounds too much like work to me, so I never really get around to it. Still, that’s the purpose here. If I ever do get a real website up, I’ll need some way to direct people to it rather than sports articles about some high school kid from five years ago.

My evening yesterday was pretty quiet. T– and AB were at the mall when I got home, so I went ahead and did my workout. By the time I was done, T– had soft tacos on the table. I mixed up some salsa, we all had a delicious dinner, and then we went for a quick walk through the neighborhood. After that AB went to bed, we watched Rules of Engagement and How I Met Your Mother, and then it was pretty much bed time.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.

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Journal Entry: May 18, 2009

Thursday
Last Thursday night I came home from work, played with AB a little bit, and then T– and I settled in to watch the rest of Lost as soon as possible. When that was done we still had The Office and Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock to watch, so it was a busy evening and swiftly done.

D– caught me on Google Chat around nine and suggested we go for a walk, so that kept me up even later. It was worth it, though. We figured out Lost.

Friday
Friday I got to leave work an hour early to pick up T– and AB for T–‘s ultrasound, which was the big one. You’ve all heard by now, but I learned then that we’re expecting a boy. Awesome. As T– mentioned on her blog, we went out for celebratory ice cream at Freddy’s.

Then we had dinner with D– and K– and N–, as well as her visiting dad and his wife and…mother-in-law? I think that’s right. Anyway, we went to Papa Dio’s, a fantastic Italian place right around the corner from our place. The food is incredible there. We all had a great time.

Saturday
Saturday I slept late, and didn’t really get cleaned up and going until after ten. Shortly after that Diana showed up to take AB to the zoo so T– and I could go watch a movie. We went with D– to see Angels and Demons. I’m not a Tom Hanks fan (unless he’s starring opposite a young Meg Ryan or two or three) and I’m not a Dan Brown fan, so my opinion on the movie is heavily biased. But the movie didn’t really do anything to change my bias. For what it’s worth.

Shortly after the movie B– and E– came over to drop off their little one with T– so the rest of us could go play laser tag. E–‘s…umm…sister-in-law’s brother (or some such) was in town visiting, and he wanted to get the true American experience. Or E– just didn’t want him to be bored the whole time. Whatever, she came up with plans, and we followed through.

K– met us there, too, so we had a whole crowd. It was only the second time I’d ever done laser tag (and I don’t remember the first time at all, except that it happened), and…not really what I expected. Way more fun. More exhausting, too. We only played one game, and we old men couldn’t have done more than that. Out of 34 people, K– came in second, and E– seventh. We were quite proud of them. The rest of us landed between 15 and 20.

After that everyone went there separate ways, although D– came back to our place and bought us pizza. We started Hellboy II (at long last) and got about 30 minutes into it before T– decided she was ready for bed. I stayed up a while later playing Fallout.

Sunday
Sunday morning I got up and mowed the lawn before church. I also got to deliver a copy of Ghost Targets: Expectation to our preacher, who read and loved Gods Tomorrow. I’m looking forward to some great feedback from him.

T– and I picked up some fajitas to go from On the Border, for lunch, and then afterward I ran up to the mall to grab some new shorts (and ended up with a full shopping list). When I got home, I helped T– rearrange some furniture (in preparation for setting up the new nursery), and we were about halfway through with that when B– showed up for another of E–‘s planned activities.

This time it was just B– and the sister-in-law’s brother and D– and me, but we went to Bricktown to watch a Red Hawks game. That’s minor league baseball, in case you don’t regularly follow the team. The display of athleticism was pitiful and not worth the price of admission, but the weather was perfect, and it was a nice afternoon out with the guys. Not too shabby.

After that D– and I ran up to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner, since T– was at Small Groups at the church. When she got home I put AB down to sleep, and then we watched a little TV.

Other than that, it’s just things and stuff.