Joel, in his awake and curious stage. He is getting much more apt at moving his arms--he is even aiming them at things with some success. It is wonderful...except for the growth spurt that makes him squirmfully awake a lot.

I have gotten the dissertation document done according to the tastes of my advisor. Now to officially schedule after getting the last few bits finalized (making sure the page numbers match up correctly, pretty much). I plan to defend in two weeks! That means May graduation!

The 30-hour famine was last weekend at church. The kids were wonderful. We ended up TPing the senior pastor's house at 1AM after having a sizable and incredibly fun war with play-doh. Man, you have to love working with youth. :)

Speaking of which, Anne is back at work as of this week. It is an awkward transition with Joel in his "I will be fussy for three days" growth phase.

Awesome news....Sal is back and he brought Joel an awesomely knockoffish "Batman Begins" baby outfit from Delhi. It rocks. Sal without gifts rocks too. Man, we really missed him. And he looks good holding a baby too (ours, not one he brought back from Delhi).

Car for sale. Under 200k miles!

Just kidding. I (by coincidence) pulled into the garage a day ago with it set up like that. It flipped just after backing out the driveway. Now I have to be sure it can do the 300 miles to and from Detroit every week in addition to normal driving.

I got to spend the evening with Joel while Anne was out at the store. Did you know that there are bottles that have no bottoms on them? You are supposed to add a bag full of milk to them! Oh well. Whoever said that there is no use crying over spilled milk was right. Too bad Joel hasn't heard that one.

We got some good baby pictures of Joel! We got them done in a local studio (but not from Daryl (yet)). They were some of those packages that they do to get you in the door in the hopes you will get more than is in the package. He looked awesome in them. Come by and see some real and pictural Joel.

I was feeling pretty down this week until last night. I went running twice (for only a half of 3/4 miles each time though) yesterday afternoon. Then Anne and I had a good meal at El Vaquero. This morning I actually got up at 4:45 for hockey. Hockey was super-sweet to play because it had been over a month and a half since I had played. The exercise made me far happier than I was.

The dissertation is going well. I just got back a good draft from my advisor and I think it will be a go fairly soon. Dang, I need to get my grad school and dissertation mind back on...or any mind that is fully awake and aware for that matter. I hope to defend within the month so I can make May graduation.

Oh yeah, we had a sweet mailing come in today at work! A guy wrote a song about his recent car purchase and sent his CD in with his survey. It rocks. You will have to hear it when you (whoever "you" is) come over. 

Nate and Mandy (BGSU grad friends) came over today. It was REALLY nice to see some friends from school around. Nate and Joel were bonding in this picture.

I have been on a super-busy course of life for the past few weeks. If I have not been communicating well (yes, this means with you), then please excuse me. I really want to see you all over. I think it will be time for a party within the next few weekends.

We had the big ol' fundraiser dinner dance at Zoar over the weekend...as well as youth group stuff and such. It has been quite a work load. I am doing the dissertation during lunch hour and I think it is almost there. I still cannot get this stupid RAID setup working on my computer. Now I think the controller has gone bad. The car is doing well. The Detroit trips (twice a week now) are going well. I actually get a genuine 36 mpg on the hignway in that thing...and it is going to kick over 200k this week. I had a basement system group over this saturday. This stinks...we buy the house and the walls start bowing in. It looks like we will be dumping 1k-2k into the walls that we were not planning on having to spent. Then EVERYTHING in the basement will have a lifetime guarantee.

I have to get up at 6 tomorrow to drive to Detroit...Joel is sounding like he will be wound down in a few minutes. Time for bed (sleep has been scarce lately).

Anne and Joel using their sweet "peanut shell" sling. Joel really likes this sling...or at least he falls asleep shortly after getting into it. I am up early to get to Detroit. Joel was up a lot last night too...argh.

The drive is sort of enjoyable though. I have been catching up on mhbcmi.org services and listening to NPR, but I think I will start listening to the learn Japanese and Spanish discs that I was doing when I used to walk to BGSU.

4 eyes

He is looking more like us every day. Actually, Joel pulled my glasses off and started teething on them. Since he already had his baby goo on them...

Joel has been really cool. He has gained about a pound and a half since birth. He is eating and sleeping well. He even sleeps when we do (for the most part). The best times with Joel are when he is smiling. We play the "up in the air...down on the lap" game and he makes a ton of great faces. Anyway, we are happy. We have done a lot of firsts with him and he has come through them all well (babysitting at my parents', feeding (breast) milk from a bottle (once), fingernail clipping, cloth diapers, and such. His cord fell off too!

Wal-Mart is going to move into Perrysburg next to Meijer. There is no reason for another retailer that carries those goods...let alone a Wal-Mart. There will be a protest at 4pm on Tuesday February 7th at Heartland. I think there will be a good presence of people I know. We plan to be there...I hope you will be too.

I have started going up to the Renaissance Center for work. The place is ALL different with the Superbowl crowd. Monday consisted of a bunch of people with press passes wandering around lost. Tuesday was surprisingly clear, but there were a few dozen people standing around watch ing the live broadcasts of several radio and television shows. Now if only I knew or cared about football...

Random other junk: I modified a walk-in closet closetmaid setup for one of the nursery closets, and it worked well; Anne has taken back almost all of the girly pink baby clothes that we had tags for (about half or the total pink things); I now have almost the entire house in compact florescents and I have replaced almost all of the ugly fixtures; I got a good time in on the dissertation and I feel nice about getting it done soon (assuming I have a few more nice days on it); my car's odometer will be turning over the big 200k in another week; Saranga wrote and said that he is travelling to many places all around India (we are really excited to hear all about it and to have Sal meet Joel); we are helping coordinate a single blockbuster fundraiser at church on Feb 11th--it is a Valentines dinner dance with silent auction...it should be a good time; I got some really cheapo unroasted coffee from an internet store that is going out of business--5lbs of decent decaf and 10 lbs of mediocre "Indian monsoon" decaf--it makes an ok dark dark roast; the studio is set up with the new desk and it actually looks nice--now for some more time to use it! That is about all. Life is good!