Byrdslair

As sarah has pointed out, I’ve been much better at doing the occasional status update on facebook, rather than on this blog … somehow it feels like the blog takes too much time when i’m at work, but facebook doesn’t ;).

So, the key thing to announce on the blog is that Michelle & I are pregnant! Yay! Due date is March 20th (so, three days before my birthday) and we’ll find out the gender (hopefully) on October 22nd.

I’ve actually gotten a fair bit of grief from people over saying “we’re pregnant” rather than “michelle is pregnant” because, obviously, I’m not physically pregnant :). On the other hand, using a personal pronoun (“we”) rather than a third person one (“she”) associates me with the situation and helps me feel like (and be) an active participant. The more I think about it, the more I think the people who object to the personal pronoun are being short-sighted and are more likely to hinder a father-to-be’s personal involvement in his wife’s pregnancy (something I suspect most of them would not wish to do). So I shall continue to use “we” :)

So far, Michelle has been feeling quite good, all things considered. She has more frequent headaches & migraines (but can no longer take migraine medicine, which isn’t much fun), gets tired much faster (and is tired longer), is more sensitive to smells and some tastes … but she hasn’t had any morning sickness, nausea, or strong cravings, so, really, so far so good ;).

October 13th, 2009 | Category: Personal | Comments (3)

So, in another annoying instance of things not working, we can no longer open our mail box. Our townhouse has as it’s “mail box” one of many relatively small locked boxes in a large mail box. Unfortunately, neither my nor michelle’s key will go all the way into the lock for some reason. Presumably, something is stuck in their, but we’ve no idea what, nor how to go about fixing it.
Do we call the post office? The home owners association? A locksmith? Sigh.

August 27th, 2009 | Category: Personal | Leave a comment

Last friday, while I was driving home from work, the back left (driver’s side) window on my car stopped working. It rolled down (and back up) just fine, but when I was a few miles from home (and off the highway again), I rolled the windows down and that window didn’t roll down all the way.
I’m not sure what broke, but somehow the window wasn’t rolling up or down anymore. I manually slid it up before michelle and I went out for dinner but after we were done with dinner (an excellent dinner at La Fondue), i was fiddling with it again and it just sorta fell into the door. I’m not sure how else to describe it — the window was mostly rolled down and then all of a sudden sorta slid down further and was gone :(
It doesn’t sound as if it’s broken, but it’s definitely not on it’s tracks or whatever, so I’m currently sitting in Starbucks trying to work from here while my mechanic takes a look at it. Hopefully it won’t cost too much to fix! It’s one of those things that you sorta *have* to fix — it’s almost winter, so it’ll start raining soon, so being able to roll up the window is important and, on top of that, it’s kinda nerve-wracking to park your car somewhere other than in your garage when the back window is completely open!

August 24th, 2009 | Category: Personal | Leave a comment

Wow, it’s been a *long* time since I last posted! I apologize to all the avid readers of this blog … oh, wait, nobody really reads this ;). No worries then.
Since getting back from Europe, we’ve been quite busy, but pretty much entirely in “normal life” ways that don’t really make for very good stories.
We’ve had dinners with friends, hung out at festivals, gone to a wedding (yay for Brian & Jenny!), and worked a whole lot.
I (along with two others — Joel and Andrew) cooked all the tri-tip for Brian and Jenny’s wedding a few weeks ago. That was a lot of work since we marinated all 29 tri-tips (80 or so pounds worth of tri-tip) the day before (friday) and then grilled and cut as many of them as possible between wedding & reception, not finishing till about half-way through the reception (all the “kitchen staff” were friends of brian & jenny, so we helped out with other things too, once the tri-tip was done).
I’ve had to work a *whole* lot lately, though it’s gone back down to more normal hours this week. Working weekends and evenings starts becoming draining very quickly since it tends to me i get almost no introvert time and makes it harder to enjoy any free time (whether introverted or extroverted) when i do get it.
Michelle’s work has been pretty annoying lately, her manager still seems to get a power-trip out of being in charge of other people and enjoys demonstrating his power by criticizing Michelle & her co-worker (as well as having them do most of his work as well as their own). If the economy was better, Michelle would definitely be looking for a different job right now. The problem being that it would still probably be an entry-level job without much chance for promotion … to move up, we’d need to commit to having her spend a year or so of evenings studying for to get some key certifications … but we’re not sure that’s really worth the time investment since we’re hoping she’ll be able to work for her mom in the long term.

Anyway, i’ll try to post more frequently, i promise :)

August 19th, 2009 | Category: Personal | Comments (4)

We got up a bit earlier than yesterday, but still at a decent time (7:30), showered (wow, it’s still nice to not have to worry about how long you’ll have hot water in the shower), and then made it down to breakfast by 8:30. Breakfast was good and, as we’ve usually done, we tried to eat a fair bit so that we wouldn’t really need lunch :) (it saves money that way since we’ve already paid for the breakfast!).
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July 3rd, 2009 | Category: Personal | Leave a comment