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!