Up late tonight

We all went to the airport to pick up a friend of ours who'd been in Florida for the week. We were going to have just one of us go, but David was still at full speed when it was time to head to Logan, so we all went instead. He had a blast, the plane arrived a few minutes early, and we were back home about an hour ago and got him in bed just before 11. He'll sleep late tomorrow...

Note to that: Terminal C at Logan has a nice kids' playspace that's on the side of the terminal near the low-numbered gates. It has a infants/toddler area, too.

I don't usually decide to see movies from the trailer, but I think I want to see Kill Bill, Volume 1. I've never thought Uma Thurman was all that amazing, but she looks seriously cool in the Ninja Assassin In Yellow Tracksuit role. I'll wait for Woodge to see it and then plan appropriately.

Okay...

First off, a last-night report. David woke up upset around 1. We both went to settle him down, and he wound up playing for around a half-hour before he got tired enough to pass out again. Gracie helped us.

Now, the reason for my post title. We got a credit card solicitation in the mail yesterday. That's not especially bizarre, because we get that junk all the time. This one was even from our bank. There was one difference this time, though.

This solicitation wasn't for us. It was for David. I'm thinking maybe the bank is being just a tad premature...

Munch munch munch

This morning, for breakfast? Nearly _two_ bananas. That is one hungry boy.

What a bargain!

We went out shopping tonight - looking for shoes for David. Now that he's a walker, he needs shoes that are a little better support-wise than his canvas Gap sneakers.

We would have gotten them at the Stride-Rite store, but the clerk there preferred talking on the phone with a friend to helping us. So we blew out of the store and went to Filene's. Filene's had a nice pair of Stride-Rite shoes that were white leather with Velcro straps. They listed at $30, no a bad price.

But when we rang them up, it turned out they were on clearance - $6.24! So we also bought the next size up for him as well. $12.48 for two pair of Stride-Rite shoes is quite the bargain, needless to say. I'm glad the clerk in the other store didn't hang up the phone!

We shall see...

Hopefully the interview went well - I got a pretty good feeling from it, but we'll see. There could, of course, be someone better-suited for them, but I hope not. I think I'd be a good fit for them. I have a few other irons in the fire to date, but this is the best I've seen so far. If not, then the blog updates will continue at a more rapid pace until I'm eventually snapped up somewhere.

Other than that, walking continues to progress rapidly. The only thing he doesn't really have down yet is getting up unaided (he still needs something to pull up with), but that'll change soon. He really enjoys showing off for us.

Other things

In the last few days, David's ability to walk has increased exponentially. He's sixteen months old today, and he now can walk all the way across one floor of our house. He also can keep walking for a virtually unlimited period if holding one of our hands (which he now wants to do). There have also been major strides taken in his fork-wielding ability this past week. Now he sometimes even voluntarily uses it instead of his hands.

Other than that, promising news. This may not be _the_ job, but I have a series of interviews scheduled this afternoon at one prospective employer. The phone interview I had last Friday went well. I won't get too enthusiastic until someone gives me an offer, but the job I'm up for is an interesting one. We'll see.

And our new coffee table is in, so we've got to go pick that up tomorrow.

Sobering fact

I just was reading an article on how Greg Maddux has managed to win 15 games for the 15th time. An impressive statistic. I recalled reading articles earlier this season when he was struggling, suggesting he was past his prime and washed-up. So just for the heck of it, I clicked on his name in the story, and went to a stats page about his career. He currently has 288 wins, so it's likely he'll reach 300 sometime next year.

He's three days younger than I am.

Just about through...

Jane's coming home tomorrow (she was going to the Miss America pageant with her family tonight) afternoon. Managing David's been pretty easy overall - but it's had moments. When I left Jane to go to Illinois last year, David was easier to manage. Back then, he didn't crawl, he didn't really sit up, and he didn't move around much. You could put him down to do something and he stayed put. That's not the case now. And she's been gone longer than I was.

I can see how single parenthood must be difficult, that's for sure. From what I know, David's easier to take care of than a lot of kids are.

I went to the Salem, NH geek show this morning with David and former employee Robert. I was searching for another Mini-ITX box, but to no avail. We met Rob and his son Christopher there, and Rob's friend ASICguy. I know Rob found a small ATX case, and Robert (boy that could get confusing) picked up a O'Reilly pocket guide to something useful. I, OTOH left empty-handed for once. That's OK. I'll get my next Mini-ITX from iDot, the same folks I got the last one from online. It's going to be a Win2K server.

No, I won't be switching my website over to it. I really don't enjoy the thought of getting hacked easily. I'll stick with Linux and make it tougher for the kiddies.

Whoa!

This morning, I gave David a few Cheerios and his bottle, then I went in to cut up a little bit of banana for him too.

He ate what I gave him. He demanded more. before long, he'd eaten the entire banana. I was quite impressed - that's a lot o' food for a little guy.

Then I babysat for our friend Mary's boy Harry who's three months older than David for a couple of hours. Boy, that was tiring. Toddlers are a lot of work. And two toddlers are exponentially tougher.

The move is complete. Whew.

As of a few minutes ago, I finished moving all my Slashdot Journal posts over to blogspot, and changed all the links I had out there. So this is officially my new bloghome now. Woo. It'll be easier to manage from multiple systems or random locations, as I can connect to this with lots o' browsers and/or FTP as well. but usually I'll just use Blogger, hence the Blogger badge on the site. Thanks, Google!

Why the name "The fork in the road"? Well, I decided that I'm at that point in my life. And many of my postings, I've noticed, have had that sort of theme about them. So why not celebrate it? It's not like I'm bitter about it all - far from it really. But when I started blogging, I had a stable career at an independent company, and I was one of many friends without children (though we had just found out one was on the way, I didn't post about it for months). Now I'm jobless, and the father of a 16-month old boy. We almost moved, but didn't, I'm looking for a job, and in fact this week I'm experiencing single parenthood (no, no problem - Jane's just visiting her parents for a couple of days and I have the boy).

A lot of changes have happened in recent times, and I get to figure out what's next and how to get there. So I might as well share that along with the mundane trivia that most bloggers (myself among them) blather about. Enjoy the ride! I sure am!