Journal Entry: March 25, 2009

Friday evening, T--'s parents came in for a weekend visit. After dinner we introduced them to Flight of the Conchords and Castle (and they liked the latter considerably more than the former). We also rewatched Lost, because John hadn't seen it yet.

When it came time for AB to go to bed, she had no desire to leave the party. We had to put her back in her bed nine or ten times, and then during the night she kept waking up. We haven't really had that problem since she started sleeping in her toddler bed, but Friday night was awful, and Saturday night wasn't much better.

I didn't do any office time Friday night (or Saturday, either), because my office is also the guest bedroom. I made up for it Saturday morning, though, when T-- and her parents went to the Science Museum down by the zoo. While they were there, I spent two hours writing and finished up chapter two.

After that I gave D-- a call, and he and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Shortly after we got back, T-- called to invite us to join them at County Line Barbecue for lunch. We did, and it was delicious (as always).

Before any of us had finished our meals, AB started yawning (well short of her usual 1:30 nap time), and then finally put her hands on the edge of the table, and rested her forehead on them so she could go to sleep. I finished up my brisket then pulled her out of her high chair so she could rest in my lap, which was probably a little more comfortable for her.

Then we went home and put her in bed. When she woke up, John and Karla took her to play at the park just down the road, and D-- and T-- and I watched some TV. Among other things, we watched a TED Talk by Aubrey De Grey, who believes we're within about ten years of curing human aging. I'd read some articles by and about him before, but that was my first time to see him on TV. He looks like a crazy homeless man. I like his ideas, though. In fact, I'd spent the morning writing a scene in Ghost Targets: Expectation that took place in a fictional De Grey clinic, named after this guy and his crazy quest.

Anyway, around 6:30 T-- and family had some soft tacos for dinner, and I helped myself to some of the salsa. Then about an hour later D-- and I headed over to B-- and E--'s place (by invitation this time), and B-- made up some pasta and we watched Point Break enhanced by the Rifftrax commentary. I...well, I'd never seen the movie before, and I can't even imagine sitting through it without the Rifftrax dub. But with it, it was hilarious. After that we watched some stand-up, and finally headed home around 11:30.

Sunday morning we went to church, and got to see K-- and N-- and baby JD, but they hurried off afterward to grab a quick lunch and pick up N--'s sister from the airport. We took a more leisurely lunch at the recently-relocated Poblano's, and AB once again fell asleep mid-meal. On the drive home, we spent some time trying to explain to her that she was so sleepy during the day because she kept getting out of bed during the night, but I have no idea how much of that got through to her.

T--'s parents left pretty early in the afternoon, and I spent much of the rest of the day getting our entertainment system rearranged. D-- loaned us an HD TiVo he wasn't using, so I swapped it out with the one in our living room, and moved that one to the TV in the office (which, at the time, wasn't hooked up to cable or even power). While I was at it, I tried to get my fileserver (which is close to that TV) to play video output on the TV, but I had to cobble together a cable out of mismatched adapters, and it's a standard def TV (and an old one and a cheap one, on top of that). So it didn't really turn out well.

Then we spent the evening watching TV, and around 9:00 I headed back to the office to finish up chapter four.

On Monday I slipped out of work a few minutes early so I could grab T-- and rush to our accountant's office before they closed at 5:00. We got there with fifteen minutes to spare, and discovered that, rather than getting a sizable refund as I'd expected, we owed $200 on our Federal taxes. Not too bad, but it was most unexpected. I looked into the paperwork and discovered that we hadn't gotten credit for the most expensive repairs we did on the Tulsa house last year (the carpet and the new air conditioner). So we've got to get that information back to them, and hope they can get our paperwork amended in time for the deadline.

After that disappointing trip, we headed home under a tornado watch, and spent the evening watching TV.

Yesterday T-- had to work in Tulsa, and even with a stop at the bank for babysitter money and a stop at McDonalds for dinner, I beat her home. The babysitter was still filling me in on AB's day when T-- walked in the door, though, and then she took over.

I spent much of the evening working on a programming project for XBMC, trying to build a utility script that could make some plugins considerably more responsive (at the cost of system resources, but on modern PCs that's a cheap cost). We also got several TV shows watched, including Castle (another good one) and Heroes (just waiting for it to die, so I can stop watching).

Then I went back to the office, and got 1,200 words done on chapter 5. Finishing in March is now outside the realm of possibility, but I'm not letting that get me down. As long as I can get 1,000 words done a night, I'm happy. There'll be days I do more (and days I do a lot more), so if I can keep it at 1,000 words a night, consistently, I'll still be beating the pants off anything I've ever managed in the past.

Other than that, it's just things and stuff.