This is a guilty admission. Let me preface by saying that I have continued to search for jobs, continued to struggle with figuring out how to change my Web host (or actually just access the FTP site), and kept the house clean and my wife comfortable.

Now then, I hope that makes you feel better about how I spend my time. But when I have an extra hour or two in the evening (or sometimes three or four if Mia is at work and I am waiting up for her, which I usually get too tired to do) I have been playing Neverwinter Nights online. Neverwinter Nights is a computer role-playing game, and getting tapped into a community is at least one healthy aspect of it.

I am playing in what we call a Persistent World, meaning I can log in whenever and meet people to roleplay with. It has been pretty exciting, though I use it mainly to relieve stress after cramming a lot of work into a day.
Sometimes I feel that I try to have too many hobbies, or rather that my one main hobby, this Web site, leads me into too many grand ideas. I like the sense of accomplishment when I figure something out like getting my pictures posted, but on occasion, I need to do something more brainless than working but less brainless than TV. This fits the bill nicely.

At the end of my first week as a free (unemployed) man, I have decided to do some freelance work. It is something that I have been considering for a while, but haven't had a chance to dig into because I was working such long hours.

I have already connected with an agency that helps people find freelance work, I am hoping they will be able to get me going on some small, short-term projects. That is what I would like while I figure out where to go with my life.

This would also provide some flexibility to be home once the baby is born. That is going to be the hardest thing, I don't want to start a job just after the baby is born because I won't know what their expectations on my work schedule will be. Getting another job that demands long hours and willingness to put off family life is not for me.

You would think that after going through it once, I would be more aware of the warning signs.
On the other hand, I wasn't expecting lay-offs at this time, so I was very unprepared when I was called in at 4:00PM on a Monday afternoon to lose my job. Not the easiest thing to hear when you are going to be having a baby so soon.

As happened last time (maybe this should be my warning) we had been saving some money and paying off some credit cards and, after we figured it out, realized that we will be fine through the end of the year at least.
This doesn't mean that I am not going to try getting a new job. But it does mean that I am going to really look for something that I want to do. I have grown weary of jumping for the first company that makes an offer. It generally isn't the best way to find a job you can be happy at for a couple of years.

Home again. And back to the grind.

But, before I get into the rut of complaining about work, I want to talk about the wedding. It was great. I hadn't met Zack until we went out to Utah, and even then it wasn't really until the day before the wedding that I really spoke with him. However, it was very easy to approve and know that he would love my sister and treat her well.
This is very reassurring for those of you that know Monica. Especially if you have known some of the guys she dated growing up. But, as a mature she seems to have figured out what will make her happy. We are very glad for her.

And there is no chance of her having a child before us either. The oldest son having the first grandchild, that is the way it should be (for our family, I won't impose this on everyone). But, if she wanted to have a kid, I wouldn't mind knowing what it feels like to be an uncle (sorry Mickeal and Kami, you don't really count).

We made it to Utah! Finally. It was a rather long trip, going from Boston to L.A. by plane and then driving back up to Salt Lake. Fortunately, we had some book tapes to keep us company and from Vegas on, A.J.

It wasn't so bad really. We were trying to time the trip so that we would get to Salt Lake in time for the bridal/baby shower that was planned for Monica and Mia respectively. The family was throwing a combined one and we didn't want to be late. But, for some reason we could not make the headway that we thought we should. Everytime we checked the clock and compared that with the miles left to our destination, the math didn't seem to add up.
So we finally pulled in about 6:00PM which is when the party was supposed to start, and then got over to it about 7:00PM. Which actually turned out to be just fine, things were still getting set-up and they were able to start shortly after we arrived.

I want to thank everyone who attended, helped, and gave gifts during the shower. We had more baby clothes, toys and accessories than we knew what to do with. You all have made the transistion to having a child seem much less intimidating. Yes, the expected shopping was intimidating and I am glad that I don't have to do it!

The wedding is tomorrow, so I had better sign off.

We are heading to Utah for my sister's wedding. I don't know how much I will be able to write, so in case I don't update until we get back, here is a quick one.

Things are going well for us. The pregnancy is coming along nicely. You can start to see the little basketball forming, it is so cute. Also, little Jane is so squirmy. She is constantly kicking, punching, and streching out. I know that it makes her mother uncomfortable, but I think it is funny when you can feel her head and butt on opposite sides of the stomach. Though I usually try to massage her into a different position when I see it.

Site update alert!

There have been questions about where the pictures of the ultrasound are. They are coming. I promise. I am working furiously on getting them formatted correctly and don't really know why I am having so much trouble. I will let everyone know when they are ready.

But, I do have other updates that I have made to my site. I did some reading when I went out to Utah and finally have additions to the reading section of my site.
During our trip I read some short stories by Philip K. Dick including Minority Report. For you other geeks out there, he also wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which was the basis for the movie Bladerunner.
More on what I think about these works and his writing style is available in that section.

I have also been reading Panda eats, shoots and leaves. It is an interesting mix of pedantic sensibility and individualistic reality. The line that sums this up nicely is:

What I hope will become clear from this book is that one can usefully combine a descriptive and prescriptive approach to what is happening to this single aspect of the language.

As something of a descriptivist myself, I find the book interesting. But for your true perscriptivists, beware. This book doesn't live up to the promise of being grammatically correct. While I missed some of the clause errors, I did notice that the introduction uses em-dashes appropriately while the main text of the book is littered with en-dashes with spaces around them. The spaces I can forgive but seeing so many en-dashes was somewhat painful.

My mother was in town this weekend. She came back from her summer classes in England. She is getting a master's degree in Education Technology. Or more specifically integrating technology into to her teaching methods. I was able to help her with her Web site (though not as much as we wanted. Sorry Mom.) and see the sites of Boston.

Our first stop was Plymouth Plantation, which was highly recommended by my friends. We were able to visit the Mayflower replica while we were there too. Both were very interesting sites. The ship was smaller than we had expected with a larger hold than we expected. Something of a contradiction. We were told that over 100 people were housed on a ship that would probably fit inside a chapel (with overflow). The pilgrims were amazing people to have endured so much so they could achieve religious freedom. I am thankful that our country today is accepting of different religions and doesn't persecute as in times past.
The plantation was also well done. There were actors dressed and living as though they were pioneers in a new land. They spoke about the things that were important to them: farming, fishing, cooking, sewing, carpentry, religion. It was certainly a difficult time to be alive.
My mother as a history teacher was very interested in everything going on. I have been more reluctant to embrace history but even I found it very interesting. Mia and I think of everything these days in terms of bringing our kids back. This is definately on the list.

While my wife stayed home the next day, mom and I went into the city of Boston to walk the Freedom Trail. The trail is about 2 miles long, though we only traveled about 1 mile of it. That tour is packed with so much historical information it is ridiculous. We learned about the founders, the patriots, the myths that surround Paul Revere (he didn't shout as he rode) and myriad other facts about one of the oldest cities in our country.
Some great things happened in Boston and I am proud to live in the city were freedom was so highly regarded.

Before she left, my mother and father gave us the best gift. I want to thank them so much. We know that it is for the baby, but we hope you don't mind us breaking it in first :)

Today was David's wedding to Chris. It was held in Utah at the top of the Snowbird ski resort. The wedding was very nice, it went (mostly) smoothly and there were quite a number of people in attendance.
This was something of a shock because they gave everyone about 1 month's notice about the whole affair. I do not mean to say that we were suprised to hear they were getting married, quite the contrary. However, we were suprised that it was happening so suddenly.

When we were told, David offered to fly us out to Utah from JFK airport in New York city at midnight. That meant a 3-hour drive, driving through the entire city, and then catching a red-eye flight out to Utah. Fortunately, we were able to work out a deal that let us leave from our hometown at about 9:00AM. That worked out much better for us.

Coming back to the topic at hand, the wedding was very nicely done. Chris has more family in Utah so they made quite a showing. We enjoyed meeting them and getting to know her boys better as well. They will be moving to New York in September so the boys can begin school and get settled in.

We drove out to Albany this weekend to visit the Mia's family. We have been doing that quite a bit recently. They just have too much going on in their lives for us to keep up with.

As we were driving we decided to come up with names that we like for a . We are getting more confident in the idea that our baby will be a little inday (the Filipino word for a baby ). We had a couple of names written down from some baby books. None of them felt quite right, they seemed to be trying too hard. After much debate we decided that we liked the name Kimberly Jane Johansen.

Jane comes from Mia's maternal grandmother and will be the name that we call her. She can certainly decide for herself to switch that later, but for the first while we are the parents and get to make aribtrary, caprious decisions.

Kimberly doesn't have roots in either family. We both think that it is a cute name and we hope that our daughter will like it as well. I might just have to steal a nickname from my uncle though and call her Kimmers. I suppose it depends on what she will respond to.