Category: family

We had a dinner party tonight for eight people. I’ve never cooked for eight adults before. I had no idea how much food we needed – but it went off without a hitch. I made may famous easy meatballs, from-scratch tomato sauce for the first time ever (for the meatballs), brushetta, and baked asparagus with pancetta and shredded romano cheese. Everyone went back for seconds, and everone mmmmm’ed and aaaaaah’ed over it – even the culinary institute graduate!!! How cool is that? I consider it a minor miracle.

Another minor miracle: ten people have registered at nonDependant in the three days since we launched, with no promotion outside of Dawson’s blog and this site. A small beginning, but it’s still a beginning. I’m just glad someone who’s not a spouse of one of us signed up. The discussions have already been interesting, and I think they’ll get even better as more people get involved, and we get into more topics.

And one major miracle. BoingBoing linked to this profile of Judith Scott. She’s an artist who creates beautiful pieces of fiber art. Art on its own is a little miracle, but the fact that she is deaf, mute and has severe Down Syndrome elevates it to a major one. This woman has unparalleled drive and concentration to create. I wish I had a fraction of that.

I went with Jen to her doctor’s appointment this morning, and am proud to announcement that she’s healthy, happy, has great blood pressure, and is 10 weeks pregnant!!! It’s been extremely difficult to keep this a secret for so long (we’ve known for a little over a month). This morning’s appointment really brought the point home that she’s already gone through a quarter of her pregnancy, and there are just 30 weeks left until her due date (6/6/2004 for those playing along at home).

Next month, we get to hear the heartbeat. We’re taking Max with us, and I can’t wait. I think that’ll really seal it for him. He’s been a little unclear on the whole “baby growing in mommy’s belly” thing, and just kind of ignores us when we talk about it. He nods and plays along, but I don’t think it’s sunk in that he’s going to have a little brother or sister (Jen doesn’t want to find out the gender… I’m still trying to convince her). Actually, until this morning I don’t think it had really sunk in for me either. Even though we’ve been talking endlessly about baby names (and just like last time, we’re having a heck of a time trying to come up with a girl’s name), it was all academic. Today, seeing the OB again, it’s suddenly very real. It’s like Christmas Eve (for 30 more weeks!! AUGH!).

Oh, and I got to talk to my little gestating child today and he (or she) really wants you to go to nonDependant. You don’t want to disappoint a fetus, do you?

And here they are, the Halloween pics!!

• Carvin’ Mr. Jack

• Halloween

I’ve been working on this since I posted last. It’s shaping up nicely, although my CMS of choice keeps giving me fits of “no, I won’t do it the way you think I will… you do it MY way or not at all, buddy” attitude. I still think we’re on track for a mid-week launch. Daws and I need to finish writing one section, go over the site again and check for weirdness (ok, unacceptable weirdness, the closer this gets to launching, the weirder I feel), and then make it live. Look for it on Wednesday.

In non-nonDependant news, we had a peachy-keen Halloween. Pictures of pumpkin-gutting, carving, Trunk-or-Treating, and the real deal are forthcoming as soon as I can get them off the camera, exported, imported, uploaded and rebuilt, you’ll be able to see ’em. Hopefully during lunch.

I have a month to pull of a huge complex project here at work. It’s the first day of actual production, and… nothing. I’ve got coder’s block. I’m trying to get excited about writing these JSP’s, and building all these little blocks of markup happiness and it’s just not coming. I’ve reorganized the project directories three times now, created a bunch of empty includes and written some horrible comments for places where code’s going to be. What’s my problem? Code, come outta my fingers!! Get thee to my screen!

As promised, here are the pics I took when Max and I went apple picking. You can see for yourself… we had fun. Next year, we’re going earlier to get the lower apples and raspberries!

Two new galleries of larger photos (thank you, gigantic hosting plan!):

• Max’s Fourth Birthday Parry

• Max on Skates

There’s all kinds of stuff to talk about, of course, but go read Reid’s post about the whole Joe Wilson thing. Very well done. Or, if you’re not in the mood for real news, try out NationStates

Life is good. How good? I can’t really tell you, but work is great. I pulled off something this week that I never thought I’d be able to do. I accomplished a big goal that no one thought was possible, and I did it without anyone knowing it was coming, which made it even better.

Max’s fourth birthday party is tomorrow morning. It’ll be way too much fun.

And now, I’m going to go to bed. I’m freakin’ exhausted.

I admit it. I cry whenever I hear The Rainbow Connection. I have since I first saw the movie at the age of four (in 1979) when it came to the little base theater in Germany (I thought it was Iceland, but since I was four, it must have been Germany).

It makes me cry for many of the same reasons my little sister is inspired by it. It’s a hopeful song about finding our perfect selves, that place we know we’re supposed to be. Of course, I didn’t think this at 4, but the song still made me cry. It’s inspirational lyrics are countered by an almost melancholy tune. It feels like Kermit knows what he’s supposed to be, but he’s stuck in a swamp, on a log with a banjo. It’s a confusing mix of hope and pessimism that captures exactly my feelings about my perfect self. There are things I know I should be and do that I’m not doing – for a multitude of reasons. I will never be my perfect self. I will always be a frog plucking a banjo on a log looking for rainbows.

We went to the Reston Farmers Market this morning: Max, my mom and dad and Max. With being sick, and the trip, Jen needed some “alone time”. We had a great time, bought all kinds of faboo organic veggies, a little basil plant, and some flowers for Jen. I’m going to try to make something with the lovely eggplant for Jen, and I don’t even like eggplant. But, I like Jen, so it’s worth it.

I’m still not 100%. I’m congested, tired, and wheezy. Going out today sapped me good. Trailing Max and providing that parental safety thing takes a lot of energy. I’m not taking it easy before trying to make dinner. We may even postpone the faboo dinner until tomorrow. I need a nap.

Would you look at that, Heather went and announced that I’m on the board! I’m in the fourth paragraph. I agreed to do this a while ago, and well, I wasn’t sure when she would announce it to the world.

My little sister, 9 years and 11 months my junior, is a busy girl. I’m hoping I can help her take this hand-published goliath of her’s and turn it into an easy-to-manage, self-maintaining, interactive, secure and geee-orgeous site with a bodacious content management system. I’m not sure how I’m going to find the time, but I will. Now, the decision is do I build my own CMS, or find one out there that does everything I need? Does such a thing exist? Would building it myself be easier than manhandling a square CMS peg into the round hole that is Daily Prophet?

We could probably use OpenACS. I’ve installed it before and it looks like it might work. It’s AOLserver and I like that. As much as I like JSP’s at work, I still think in Tcl and translate. It’s too hard to do simple things in Java on the webserver, and that bothers me. Simple things like finding out what page you’re on, or the name of the servlet that’s running are next to impossible to get at, and that’s just wrong.

Yes, I’m still sick. It’s yet another sinus infection, so I’m coughing up lovely goblins and blowing my nose frequently. I have a ton of work to do and no time to do it in. I’m hung over from the California trip (but the pictures are up). I realized that all this Journals stuff has distracted me from my real job, and that’s not a good thing. I should be able to do everything and handle it…