Pro re nata.

Out of the blue, got an email from Case Saturday morning that he was in town. So we made plans and met up with him and his family (Jenny and Sylvia) and their friends they were staying with up at Great Seas Restaurant on Lawrence. Great to see him, catch up a little. Funny to actually see an old friend, can't even remember the last time we saw each other in person, but now we have wives and kids. Crazy. Would have been crazier if we somehow managed to meet up in my parents basement. That would have been a trip. Friday not too exciting, made our weekly trip down to Paciugo Gelato for our fix. I got an affogato, Tracy got her new favorite, black sesame. Good stuff. I spent the weekend watching Lucy since Tracy was working. The verdict on the back only sleeping a week in? Ok. Getting better, sometimes, other times not so much. Saturday she slept for 2 hours in the morning, and maybe a couple 30 minute naps in the afternoon, but Sunday only 30 minute, maybe one 1 hour nap at one point. Trying to do some sleep training, tried the whole 1-2 hours of wakefulness only today, and that worked ok. She's still sleeping through most of the night, only getting up for 1 or at most 2 feedings. 4am seems to be a fairly regular wake up time for her. Been watching Warehouse 13 and Eureka via the Apple TV. Haven't really watched cable TV in a while. Kind of nice. Gets annoying going through commercials when I do. Actually going in to work tomorrow, and then have a baptism class in the evening. Weather's been pretty nice, haven't used our AC in the last couple of days, just opening up front and back doors to get nice airflow through the condo.

For those readers that have always wanted comments, well, you kind of have it. You can comment on prn.eric.abando.com, my storytlr site. I should probably back populate with Daily Doses and Musings. More stuff to talk about. Looking forward to hearing from the 2 of you. Going to work was interesting. They did construction in the office last week, so now it's a bunch of cubicles. Rather interesting cubicles too, not I guess cubes, but like triangular pods, with 2 people to a side. Should get nice and loud in there, with everyone on phones. Nice to see the people that are still around. Even met a couple new people. Didn't get to eat all the food I want to eat when I head down there, just McDonald's for breakfast and a chicken parmesan sandwich from Rivers To Go for lunch. No Cupcake Counter, Dunkin Donuts, or Specialty's. Thinking I might head down again next week to get my fill. Went to the baptism prep class at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Enlightening. Still have to pick a date though. Have to coordinate with the godparents. Class took a little longer than we expected, so we grabbed a quick bite at Chipotle before picking up Lucy from Grandma's and putting her to bed at home. I'm on night duty this week since Tracy's got the early shift.

So Lucy slept through the night last night. Guess you didn't? This guy. She started making some noise like she was going to wake up around 1am. So I sort of waited it out in bed, checking every 5 minutes or so when I thought I heard some movement. Around 1:30am I figured she was gonna get up soon, so might as well prep and give Tracy some peace and quiet, so I turned off the monitor, and went out to the living room to use her laptop to monitor and also to get the bottle ready. 2am, movement, but Lucy never opens her eyes. I'm still expecting her to get up. I finally call it quits at 3am, because even if she did move her arms, or grunt a little, or suck on her fingers, she didn't wake up. Until 7am. And she was all cute and cuddly and quiet when she woke up. No grumpy, cranky, crying for a bottle. Just chill. So weird. Like a completely different baby. Of course she was back to her normal self when I picked her up this evening. It was croissants day, so picked some up from Treasure Island for breakfast, along with a bunch of movies from Redbox. Been reading a bunch of Star Wars comics from a torrent I downloaded a long time ago, using CloudReader on the iPad. Plowed through the Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Empire and Dark Empire II. Found out I need to read Empire End to finish that trilogy. Comics on the iPad are great.

Congrats to Katie Gregory, nee Kelly, on providing the first comment. Made me go in a tweak the theme so it looks better. Speaking of which, Lucy slept through the night again. This time even earlier, from about 8pm to 5:30am. Trending? Of course we're throwing a monkey wrench into it all by taking her to Jason's wedding this weekend in Duluth. We'll see if she adjusts accordingly, or not. If so, she'll be better at taking environmental changes than her daddy. Tried to beat the storm this morning walking her over to Grandma's daycare. But got caught anyway about 3/4ths of the way there. Lucy stayed pretty dry, as the carseat/Bob combo has some pretty good hoods. Almost like a bubble. Went over for dinner as well. Oh, my mom had to go back to Woodstock for some errands, so my dad provided day care today. Did a pretty good job. Watched some Eureka tonight. Trying to do some work at night, but not really getting much done. Too tired. Had another affogato at home today for a snack. That's good stuff. But picking between that or a latte, well, I wanted both but figured that'd be a bad idea. A little too much caffeine.

Stayed up way too late last night, trying to finish up a project for work. First time actually doing ajax stuff. Current javascript libraries make it super easy. It's actually really cool. Could totally see how that simple tech makes the web a real app development arena. JQuery, in case you were wondering. Lucy slept through yet another night. That makes 3 in a row. I keep thinking it's a trick, and she's just lulling into this concept of full nights sleep, and then she'll turn around and say Gotcha, and go to up every 2 hours. I'm just waiting for that shoe to drop. I still get up anyway around 5-5:30, thinking she'll be waking up soon. I need to edit the movies that record her sleeping. It's pretty funny seeing her scoot around over the course of a night. Picked her up a little early today since my parents are jetting off to Poland for cousin Ron's wedding. And my family's getting ready for our first road trip together. Should be interesting trucking Lucy in the car all the way up to Duluth for Jason's wedding this weekend. Hopefully she won't be little miss cranky pants. Hopefully the trip won't screw up with her full nights sleeping trend. Hopefully.

Drove to Duluth on Friday for Jason's wedding on Saturday and back home on Sunday. Drove the whole thing, which actually wasn't bad at all. I even got to listen to NPR, which really is my preferred driving experience. Borrowed my dad's Lexus Hybrid SUVish, which was nice and smooth. And Lucy was a rock star on the way up, through the crazy weekend, but then not so much on the way home. I guess there's only so much she can take. She slept 5 hours before needing to make a first stop on the way up, then only 1 more about an hour out of Duluth. Ended up going straight to the rehearsal dinner at a pretty cool barn setup for those types of occasions. Tracy was a little disappointed that it wasn't an outdoor farm table dining experience. Still good food though. Tracy also matched my outfits to Lucy all weekend long. Photos coming shortly. Also Lucy got to meet her Uncle Alan for the first time at rehearsal. Thought she was going to fall off the sleeping through the night wagon, but even with the 9:30pm-10pm bedtimes, she still managed to sleep until 6:30 and 7:30 in the mornings. Of course her first night back at home, she got up at 1am and then at 6am. Oh well. And she made us stop 4 times on the way home, for feedings and changings. Duluth seems like a nice place, but it was a lot colder than I thought it'd be. Hopefully we dressed warm enough. Wedding was beautiful and Reception was fun, if a little wet from the rain. Great to see the Schanz's, and special thanks to Renee for holding Lucy so Tracy and I could have dinner at the reception. So it was a long weekend, and then Monday morning our internet's on the fritz, so Tracy has to go in to work, and I had to work late since it didn't actually come back up until 11:45 or so. Stupid Comcast. Now I'm looking at getting additional internet service just for our work machines. Trying to figure out if I can keep Comcast is we get AT&T U-Verse as well, or maybe just go cheaper with AT&T DSL.

Been pretty busy, and actually chose sleep over updating the last couple of nights. But I figure it's about time. Been having continued issues with Comcast. Tuesday it was down again, so Tracy had to go in, yet again, but a tech came out around noon, and actually found a problem: loose connection at the house junction and loose and leaky disconnected cable at the pole. After he fixed those, it was solid for the rest of the day and night. Except when I was getting ready for bed, and actually trying to update. There were more issues again, but not with the cable modem not having a signal, rather network issues somewhere upstream. But right before I went to bed, it was back up and running. When I checked in the morning while feeding Lucy, it was back to being unresponsive. And calling in to Comcast heard a message that they're doing network something that should be done by 5am; this was at 6:30am. But looking at their Network Health page and it wasn't displaying any outages. So Tracy went in again, and so did I, which was nice, because we had an all hands meeting and they provided coffee and donuts. So that was cool. And when I got home the AT&T DSL Modem had been delivered, so I set that up. So now we have a backup system, which hopefully is fast enough for us to work remotely, but at least we've finally got something. And it's a fairly low cost. So Today, Thursday, we both get to work from home, as the Comcast connection is nice and stable. But I've been pretty crazy busy with work. Lucy's still not back to sleeping through the night. We've got fruit flies again, so I've set up the trap again. Also got ants again, so put out another trap on Tracy's side of the office, and they've been eating away, so hopefully they'll all be gone by tomorrow. And I'll be in the office tomorrow and Monday. So I guess I get to eat more unhealthy stuff again.

Between Lucy and work, it's been pretty crazy. She's still not back to sleeping through the night, getting up at least once, maybe between 12:30am and 3:30am, maybe 4 or 4:30, but up again by 6:30am. One thing I finally figured out Sunday morning: she only likes feeding when you hold her on the left side of your body. Otherwise, she falls asleep, or cries so much she can't eat. Crazy. Annoying. The AT&T DSL came in handy when it looked like Comcast went down again, and Tracy was working on Sunday, so just switched her over to it. Worked pretty well, wasn't noticeably slower for her, so already worth it. Just have to set it up so we can just plug Comcast vs. AT&T easily. For the office anyway. The ant problem near the office seems to have gone away, guess the trap/bait did it's work. Also, Apple Cider vinegar for the fruit fly trap works like a charm, and haven't seen many of those anymore. Just the odd straggler. Being in the office is interesting. Not too shabby. However, I just got my work at home VPN issues worked out, so I'm missing having those dual screens, instead of the MacBook screen I'm working with now. Had Jespy over for the Air and Water show on Saturday. Ended up getting delivery ribs because we talked about it. After today, should be back at home for a while.