Nearing Conclusion

The following Saturday night we held a party for work and llama friends to express our appreciation for gifting me extra vacation time for my surgery and to celebrate the baby coming "any day now". People seemed to have a good time, and it did not degenerate into a Wii party like The Captain (absent) feared. I must admit though that when only a few people remained we did break out the Mario Kart on the DS. Most of the remainder of that weekend was spent cleaning house for party preparation and finalizing the baby room.

On Thursday we all went to Gloria's to celebrate the birthing of Smurf. We actually had a decent turn-out of eight llamas for this gathering. Does that count as a pack?  As usual I stuffed myself on their wonderful black bean dip. The evening was concluded with cake ( no lie!).

This weekend was a calm before the brewing storm. Wife slept a bit and did some baby preparation stuff (pre-washing diapers, etc), while I played games for many hours and watched football on Sunday. Even though we were relatively lazy, we did finalize some baby stuff such as installing the car seat base, and I think we are ready whenever the day arrives.

Does anyone want a free copy of Half-Life 2? Preferably someone with a computer that at least meets the minimum requirements.

The next three weeks are going to be crazy for me. For school, I need to complete one homework, and then put together some project / report before next Monday. I have a final on Wednesday, pushed back from Friday due to baby uncertainty. I then have  another exam on the following Thursday, the time and date firmly fixed. I also have to prepare for and deliver a presentation next Thursday for work. Combine all of that with the baby uncertainty, and it could be pretty freaking crazy.

If you have read this far, you win a prize! You can subscribe to my twitter feed to receive a near-instant notification on the birth of our baby! Before any phone calls are made, I will be updating Twitter via SMS.  Isn't technology great? No, this isn't a ridiculous attempt to get more followers, although I won't complain if that is the end result.

Speaking of twitter, I had to drop the CNN feed because the people running it are idiots. They post news story headlines, but not a corresponding link to the full article; totally useless.

One other rant: if you are signing up for a gift registry (wedding, baby, etc) be advised that Target no longer accepts returns from the registry. You pretty much have to present a receipt to return any item now. Wife said, "I would not have registered at Target if I'd known that."

On Returning

The month of November has blown passed like a swift blue northern wind. It seems like only yesterday that people were dressed up in costume, screaming like mad that they were "the devil" and cutting themselves on a San Antonio city bus. Ah, public transit ... but I digress.

I obviously made it home safely, even though I never detailed my return trip. We were held way late by a useless meeting on the final day, and did not get on the road until nearly 7:00pm. The drive is about 5 hours, plus we stopped at Applebee's for dinner and were delayed 11 minutes by construction traffic, so we arrived at the office at 1:20am on Friday. I slept in the following morning, returned the rental van around noon, and lazily strode into work around 1:30pm. At around 3:30 I concluded the work day and headed home to prepare for my evening.

We drove to Grand Prairie that evening to take part in the first of two high school reunion activities: a good ol' trouncing of the football team. On the way we met my mom at Don Juan's and had an enjoyable conversation. The football game was awful, but there was enough socialization with former classmates to make it worth while. After the game wife and myself talked with one person for nearly 30 minutes in the parking lot before it grew too chilly to continue the chatter.

We returned to GP the following day for the second activity: a dinner social at the horse race track. The event was held in a large suite on the northern end of the grandstands. The food was excellent, and there was a lot of baby talk as we sat amongst other pregnant couples. My previous experience with horse racing was limited to spectacle events on television, mainly the Kentucky Derby.  Did you know that they usually don't run in a circle? Apparently it's more of a drag race style for most events, even though they have a huge oval track. As a matter of fact, the horse racing aspect of the event was extremely boring. Who spends their Saturday night watching 15 second races separated by 20 minute breaks? Wife took some pictures of one race, and of the "track zamboni" tractors, and then we called it a night.