Same as it Never Was

If it has become apparently obvious, I don't do much writing here these days.  This should be no surprise since my bread and butter comes from the other site.  But I do like to put some personal stuff here for journal-archive purposes.

On Friday I had a decent Extra Curricular To Do (EXTD) list and was looking forward to knocking some stuff out.  Unfortunately the universe had other plans.  I got a call from daycare that Boris had Diarrhea and I had to come get him.  No sense in picking just him up so I went and brought both kids home after lunch just as they were getting ready for nap.

Natasha didn't want to sleep so she stayed up while Boris got two hours.  Then around 4, she crashed and I let her sleep for an hour.  This was a precursor of what was to come because this weekend we had events that meant skipping nap.

On Saturday Gemma was in town and someone from the old RCYA group hosted a cookout. 
While Gemma is aware that there is no love lost between me and most of that crew, she understandably values her convenience a bit more and having everyone be in one place is easier for her.  Since we had to miss her wedding last year, I figured it wouldn't kill me for one afternoon to hang out with these people especially since it is only 2-3 specific people and one of those didn't come.

That's not to say, if you knew what to look for, there wasn't something in the air.  The Krazy Guatemalan came up to me, shook my hand and said hello in a manner that was like "well lets get this out of the way".  So-Suede waited as long as he could and was the last person to acknowledge me.  Even his wife was friendlier and more welcoming.

It probably would have been more apparently awkward had I come by myself but luckily, with two toddlers you never have a dull moment.  So between managing them and catching up with everyone else, time moved quickly.  Gemma of course overbooked her day and had to leave around 3 to make her next event. 

We stayed for about a half an hour more. I wanted to talk more with the host and this would have been a good time since once half your party leaves, you can take a break.  But our kids were approaching meltdown moment so it was a good excuse to leave as well.

On Sunday we took them to their first White Sox game.  We did this with Katness because Sundays are family day and the tickets are cheap.  Unfortunately there was traffic so even though we left early, it took almost an hour to get to the ballpark and we missed the opening fireworks (saw them from the parking lot).  We did manage to stay until the start of the sixth inning before we decided it was a good time to leave.  We wanted to beat traffic and avoid large crowds of fans. 


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Blood Moon Baptism

.Last week was extremely busy because we had Moose and Squirrel's first birthday and their baptism on the same weekend.  Figures there would be a Blood Moon lunar eclipse last night.  Or perhaps that was because the Cubs are going to the playoffs via the expanded Wild Card route.  I didn't take pictures of the Blood Moon because I figured everyone else would. Thanks to Facebook, I was not disappointed in that expectation.

For the most part, the stuff we could control went very well.  We decided to keep the kids home from daycare to save some money.  We realized that was a mistake because it is hard to get anything done when they are in their mommy or daddy-centric mode.  We couldn't correct that decision but could re-frame our expectations in that we weren't going to complete all our bold re-organization and purging projects, but whatever we did manage to accomplish would be better than we were before yay that.

There were some wins for sure.  I found a party pizza package that managed to feed everyone (with 1 extra pizza for leftovers) that only cost about a hundred bucks (before tax and tip of course). 

The baptism was a lot more trouble than it should have been.  We decided to do it at the same church where we got married and they made us jump through some unexpected hoops.  To be clear, any church would have made us jump through the same hoops or even more.  But we got tied to this church and ran out of time to find another one.  Well, at least it is over.

We had to sit through a Polish Mass.  I get that the church is doubling down on its dogma and requiring members to actually show up outside of Easter and Christmas.  But to make small children sit through a mass they aren't capable of understanding yet is just cruel and unusual punishment.  1-year-olds get fussy and want to walk around.  It is very hard to keep them contained for an hour.  Nothing is served by making them be in God's house because God's presence is everywhere.

Two Weddings, Two Communions, same God

We went to two wedding in one Saturday a couple weeks ago and I suppose I should say something about that. Because we made the effort, the first party sat us at their table as guests of honor, which I believe was quite classy, if rather unnecessary.

This photo is aligned right just like the groom's politics

This of course had the intended benefit of us staying a little longer than planned such that we got to the second ceremony just in time to receive our second communion of the day.

We were seated with Sabrina who was one of the few single women there so she got a lot of attention from a couple of the single guys. Never got the 411 on what happened though there was a FB post later that evening showing everyone having a good time.

While that picture was being taken, we were at the second reception, sitting with a group of the bride's coworkers. They were a nice friendly enough bunch to get through the evening with no expectation of long term bonding. The gentleman next to me was excited because he and his son had run the SF10 together. I mentioned that I had run it too but didn't share my results as that would have seemed like boasting.

The reception was at a golf club on the south side and it was a dated but elegant club. Couple two hired a live band from the Red Hat Piano Lounge and really wanted people to come out and dance so we obliged.

We made a short term friend at this wedding who was interesting to talk to although I cannot remember her name. I guess that term ended.

I should say something profound about these couples getting married relatively later in life than they had hoped.  Indeed, I'm all out of profound these days.. So how about this instead. 

No Second guessing these Life Decisions

It seems like I always second guess my decisions or have trouble making a decision in the first place.  Sometimes I cannot even decide what I want to have for lunch.  However, there are three decisions I've made over the course of my life that I am at perfect peace.

I refer to these as the Three Best Decisions of My Life. Sure, I’ve made many decisions that have arguably worked out better, such as marrying Nightingale. The reason I single these three out is they are decisions that I've never seconded guessed or looked back on and regretted, other than perhaps wishing I had done them sooner.

Going to G-School: When I finished undergrad, I swore I would never go back to higher education.  However, after not breaking into a journalism and suffering years as a litigation paralegal for an evil corporate law firm, I decided that being able to eat and pay rent the same month was the life for me. 


Becoming Catholic: My family is catholic but they didn’t send me to parochial school, probably more out of cost than true heathenism.  As I got older I got more spiritual and ironically, I was reading a lot of Anne Rice at the time and her descriptions of the Catholic rituals got me curious. I started going to church and a few months later I had my epiphany.

It was Labor Day weekend 1999, and my roommate and long time friend from high school friend had just moved out. Talk about a souvenir of a terrible year: I had lost my job, broke my toes, and been mugged within a three week period. It was a very dark time in my life. I felt like a weight was about to crush me. Then I took a deep breath and felt like everything would be alright.  And I know that wasn't my own steam, God had shown some mercy on me.

Getting Lasik Eye Surgery: It was never a question of if but when. I’m glad I did it because not fumbling with contact lens or waking up to blurry vision is tremendous.  Lasik — short for laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis, which entails cutting and reshaping the cornea.

Were there risks?  Sig Other 1.0 was an ophthalmologist and she told me that in the early years there were so many people who got Lasik that later research would have declared them bad candidates that the industry as a whole voluntarily tightened the definition for what a good candidate was so as to prevent lawsuits unsuccessful surgeries.

Looking back, I don’t think going to G-School any sooner would have been an option from a financial standpoint. Same goes for Lasik. Sure.  I joke that I used the money for Polish Girlfriend 1.0 ring to pay for my surgery.  The truth is I had FSA money set aside and it came down to use it or lose it.  And it took hitting rock bottom and having an epiphany to get me to become catholic.  And in the baker's dozen years that I've been, I've certainly not lived up to all the requirements and have certainly challenged the doctrine. 

I do sometimes wonder if I should have chosen some different course work at DePaul. IIRC the program options for CTI were not very flexible even though they were toted as such at the time.  That's the way of marketing, even in academia.  They made it sound like you could switch from Databases to Networks concentrations when in reality most of the concentrations shared very few common courses.

CatchingUp on Bloggage

Things have been very busy both at work and at home. At work my summer slowness has dissipated and I now have more things going on. It's not quite the busy workload I'm use to and I would feel more secure in my employment if I had just a few more things going on, but it is a step in the right direction.

When it comes to workload, I don't like to be so busy that I cannot keep up with things nor do I like to only have one or two things that will take 5 minutes to complete once I get started. That's probably why my timesheets are always late.

At home we are doing some purging.  We are trying to get rid of things we don't need or use to make more room in our cramped condo and hopefully eliminate some things we would likely pack and cart off to a new home.  In that process I discovered a way to merge two gifts given by different friends at different times in my life.


I wonder if I could mass produce and market these?

 TrueSusan made this fruit bowl for me years ago as a condo warming present.  For our wedding DrDrea gave us this fruit holder wire basket.  Nightingale and I use it every day as she buys fresh produce every Sunday.  However, she felt that the wires were too far apart and smaller fruit would fall through.  Voila -- Icarus solves that problem.
Chicagoans are groaning about last Sunday's Bears game. We lost one we should have won. However, more than once this season we won one we should have lost (Carolina, Detroit). Even the defending Super Bowl Champion Giants lost to a rookie quarterback.

Sunday was also the start of Advent which use to be not only important for me, but also very symbolic. Advent is the beginning of a new Liturgical year in the Catholic Church.  This means Roman Catholics are preparing to celebrate in joyful expectation the birth of Christ. 

Advent is acknowledgement of the days growing shorter and darker.  While many people believe the bridge between the world of the living and the dead is extended during Halloween, a few Catholics believe Advent and Christmas is another time when that veil is thinned.  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  It harkens both the dark days of superstitions and the bright light of faith.

I use to think of Advent in the same way that people like to look at New Year's Day. Purging, Clearing out, Preparing, Examining.

I'd get all self aware and reflective. I'd look back at the calendar year that had passed and take stock of my successes and failures and think about what i could to do improve the next year.  There were a lot of Sundays in church looking at the Advent candles -- one, two or three lite -- and reflecting on the damaged relations and lost friendships of the previous year.