Monday, November 4 2019

Dear Journal,

Good morning, everyone. Wherever you are, I hope you are finally getting adjusted to the time change. Complaints about daylight savings aside, at least it falls on a weekend, so you have a day or two to sort yourself out. It's 7:28 AM where I'm writing this, and that feels just about right. Rodney, on the other hand, is wide awake, throwing his stuffed animals around. I take it he isn't quite adjusted yet.

It's much brighter this morning. Sometimes I forget that that's kind of the point behind daylight savings. It's supposed to give us more light in the morning. Or is it? That's one of those things I'd really have to sit back and think about, but what's the point?

Yesterday was a pretty full & fun day. We made it to early church, and as we were picking up Rodney at the end of the service, the Sunday school teacher said Rodney is getting really comfortable playing with other kids. Usually, before we get him, Marissa and I like to spy for a few minutes. You very rarely get to observe your kid like that, and it's interesting to see what they do when you're not around. Our last church actually had a two way mirror. It kind of reminded me of a psychology lab.

After church, we went home for a bit. Rodney watched some TV while I cleaned up my AWS bill - which was long overdue. AWS is scary business because most of the billing goes off of usage, so most months it's only a few cents here and there, but I guess conceivably if any of the 8 or so silly websites I own suddenly got popular, I could be looking at a nasty bill. I moved a handful of sites over to the much thriftier github hosting, and for only having about an hour at home before our next outing, that was pretty good. I cut the bill in half, from \$6 a month to \$3 and change. High fives self.

We all jumped in the car and drove over to Alex and Cassie's house. Rod brought his bilingual airplane & airport set. We ate pizza, knocked back a few beers, and watched the Bears go out with a whimper against the Eagles. Watching the game with other people made it a little easier to stomach how bad the offense was playing yesterday. It was also great catching up with Alex and Cassie. They have a cool place downtown, and you can see the capital right out their living room window.

After the game, we went home, and Marissa and Rodney took a long nap until dinner. I was thinking about cooking something, but Marissa talked us into just having the leftovers from our fridge - which was a good decision. Getting a break from cooking, I had plenty of energy to straighten up the house.

After putting Rodney to bed, Marissa and I worked on the IT corner. I powered everything off while she sanded and drilled three wood shelves. I held the boards and brackets in place while she screwed them to the wall. About an hour and a half later, I had everything plugged in, finally hitting the big red button. I was very pleased that all of my home infrastructure passed the 'reboot test'. Normally when you turn everything off, then on again, at least one thing needs to be manually reconfigured, but last night the IT gods smiled upon me and everything gracefully warmed back up again. The shelves look pretty sweet, too. I decided not to go nuts with the cable management until I get a few missing parts, but just having all the crap sitting on a shelf makes it look much neater.

After finishing the shelf, Marissa and I finished watching Bridge of Spies. It was a long movie, but ultimately worth it. Tom Hanks has the kind of face that earns your trust. Like, if Tom Hanks were telling a really long story, I would hang with it until the end - same goes for his movies, I guess.

This morning, I have "nesting" on the brain. Marissa just finished her first trimester. And by "trimester", I mean a third of a human pregnancy. We found out we were having another baby - well - one trimester ago, and as I'm about to tell my work later today, I figured I might as well also tell the ol' blog about it too. While I have big news, I don't have a lot of reflections this morning. Remember, I've known for a while. But trust me, I hate it when there are big things going on in my life that I can't write about. I like this journal to be as porous with my personal life as possible, and plus there were plenty of mornings when I didn't have anything to talk about, and I could have used the extra material.

But back to what I was saying - this week, "nesting" is top of mind. As I was walking through the house rebooting things before the shelf, it came to my attention that some of the IT in the house has been neglected. I think the last time I threw a weekend at our home network was when I mounted everything to the wall. It's due for another pass, especially with Christmas coming up. Last night before bed I was adding things to my amazon wishlist. I think I'd like to move the router pieces into an "open air case", which is basically just a metal bracket that holds all the parts as a stable unit without a big computer tower. I just learned there was a name for it last night. Don't you just love when you find out there's a name for the possibly imaginary thing you're picturing in your head?

I'm also a little behind on chores. I keep up with my daily and weekly chores pretty well, but the house could use some love before it gets cold outside. Last night, I was kicking around the idea of establishing a cleaning power hour in the evenings - something like 9pm to 10pm - where I just pick one neglected corner of the house and knock it out of the park. Marissa rolled her eyes as I interrupted myself, assuring her "I wouldn't bug you about this, this is just a 'me' thing. You have enough to do,".

So that's what I got today. Wherever you are, I hope you have a great morning and a great rest of the day. I hope you take advantage of the last remaining days of above freezing temperature. Go for a walk in the rain, or drive somewhere with your windows open - it's going to be a long winter!