Work

Things are getting pretty busy, and I don't quite see a light at the end of the tunnel yet.  We're going live with something at the end of this week, and that should alleviate my weekend and after hours work after this weekend, but we're still severely short staffed and my boss isn't giving me an increase in O&M to hire another person yet.  Still, the work has increased about four-fold.  We'll see what happens with this, because we really need one or two more people at minimum.

In good work news, I did finally get my bonus, and a 3.5% pay raise takes effect on my next paycheck.  I am also happy that I got my bonus, tax refund, and paycheck all on the same day.  That was needed money, and we're starting to get on more financially stable ground now.

Family

My daughter is getting much bigger and more active.  I could write lots of things here, such as how she's eating a lot of normal food now, how she's starting to walk across the living room while holding onto the sofas, or how she's getting a lot more personality.

Maybe I should just focus on one thing that happened yesterday.  To put it simply -- my daughter played Katamari Damacy.  Yes, I know a 10 month old can't really play video games.  She just pressed buttons while watching the screen and laughed when it made funny noises.  Still, it's a start.  She seems to have enough control of her hands to use the D-pad and the mini joysticks on the PS2 controller.  Of the 10 minutes or so she played with the PS2, she only tried to eat the controller two or three times, so it was a success.

My wife is doing well, has lost a lot of weight, and held a baby shower for the oppressed wife of a coworker last Saturday.  That went well.  Back to the weight loss for a moment though, she lost about 18lbs or more so far, so she's doing great and getting hotter every day.

One other thing about my daughter though.  She was trying to walk one day last week.  She fell down, while I was laying on the floor blocking her from walking out to the kitchen.  She fell right on my eye, head first.  It hurt, so I put some ice on it, but I got a bit of a shiner from that.  It never really turned very black, but it's at the yellowish phase now where it's most visible.

Gardening

I've started work on my yard, and plan to be a good suburbanite this year if I can.  I've put about 22 bags of mulch out in the places that needed it in my yard.  Since I don't have a wheel barrel, it was tiring, but good exercise.  I also put weed and feed out in the grass, then after a week sprayed some nasty stuff to kill the remaining weeds before I pulled them.  My wife has replaced most of the flowers in our front yard and planted a few extras, but unfortunately some azaelia bushes seem to be drying up already, at least their flowers are.  The soil here is horrible -- it's red clay with small strips of sand occasionally appearing in it.  Not the most conducive for plant life.

In the future, I plan to put some fruit trees in the back, as well as some other fruits and veggies over time.  I also need to fill in some holes in the back yard where the fucktards next store never fixed it after tearing down the fence to build their pool.

Politics

All you need to know is this:

He's a lot better than the other fuckheads out there, so he's got my support.

The Economy

The economy sucks, and it's failing.  Still, I almost don't care because I know I'll take care of my family no matter what happens.  I can't freak out to the degree of some of the Dailykos folks, but I'm also not going to ignore it and pretend that everything's ok in Bushlandia like the Redstaters do.  I guess I am just preparing for a worst case scenario, but not considering it to be too likely that we do end up in something like the great depression.  What is most likely is that we fall somewhere in between a depression and recession, where things like telecommuting and growing our own foods will help.

This is probably enough of a diary for now.  If I write them more regularly, they don't have to be too long.