On the Turning Away

I signed into my account today and saw how long it's been since the last time I deigned to post--over 3 months. I'd been thinking about it for a few weeks, but that last bit of info was what put it over the top for me: it's time to put this blog to bed.

There are a few reasons that led to my decision:

1. Childbirth. Once the mini-BG was born, the range of things that I could waste my free time on was drastically reduced to only those that I really, really wanted to do. As evidenced here, blogging usually didn't make the cut.
   
2. Yadda yadda yadda. While I wanted to dedicate time to writing essays (or rants), more often than not what I ended up with would have made a nifty Facebook status update.
3. Facebook. I've enjoyed using FB more in the past few months than I have slogging over to here for the past year or so. With FB, all I need is a sentence and I feel like I've fed the blog beast, even if that content has all the depth of a Michael Bay movie. It also inspired a lot more frivolity on my part; everything here feels like it needed to have weight. As if, "It's a blog post, it'd better be important." Over at FB, I can wax whimsical for a few words about how great "wax" is as a verb, and I'm out. It's been a very freeing experience.

So, I'll be slowly dismantling this. Posts that I've cribbed from my other Web haunts will be the first to go, and then I'll start moving stuff to either FB or the virtual dustbin of the hard drive.

Adieu then, blogosphere. We'll always have Paris.

We'll Make History

Greetings! Time to dust off the cobwebs from this blog, ignore the pregnant pause I left behind with that last post, and type about something else entirely.

On Tuesday night, I got home after having cast my vote, and turned on the tube for a multi-hour bombardment of punditry. MLW came home a short time later, and was soon similarly encamped, with laptop open to keep up with the lastest Internet snark.

The mini-bg, however, was less than enthralled, and demanded near-constant entertainment in the form of Candy Land, Operation, puzzle building, and a plethora of other emphemera. When bedtime rolled around, both MLW and I were more than ready to get the toddler tucked in.

But as we headed up the stairs, I had a thought. MLW and I both wanted to watch as much of the coverage as possible, because we were both fully aware that there was a pretty good chance that we would be watching history unfold. But our daughter will only understand the night's signficance in hindsight. To her, it won't be groundbreaking to watch a black man be elected president; she won't fully understand the sea change our country had to go through (and is still going through) in order him to get there. She won't know a world in which this wasn't possible--she'll just accept that it is.

I had many reasons for being happy on Tuesday, but that thought was probably the best reason of all.

Free Fallin'

In the past few years, when asked to describe the environment in which I work, I used to state that it was akin to "working for a dot-com that will never go under."

I may turn out to be very, very wrong.

Sign in Stranger

When you've not posted to your blog in over a month--despite having plenty of things to type about--and you're looking to get back in the saddle, what's the best way to go about it? Update your link list.

So, the New Beast that I last spoke about here has almost finished its journey toward publication. Link's on the right.

Fireflies

A few weeks ago, MLW took the mini-BG in for her yearly heart check-up. It's a new doctor now, since the prior one no longer sees children on account of his susceptibility to infection (owing to the fact that, get this, he had a heart transplant in the last year). This year went off without a hitch, primarily because the toddler's now of an age that she can be distracted throughout the tests by various cartoons.

Aside from getting her current stats (over 32 lbs., 3'3" tall), the docs found that her condition is great. Her heart is always going to be "noisy," since she still has a mass on the outside wall, but it has not gotten larger, and hopefully as she continues to grow it will remain the same size as her heart increases in size. She had to wear a monitor for 24 hours, which she'll most likely have to do every time she goes to a check-up, but she was a real trooper and reaped a reward of "junks" (anything sugary or extremely fattening).

Three years on, I'm less inclined to remember the exact date when the mini-BG had her surgery, as it was not an easy day to have lived through. In its place are these check-ups. Every year I'm able to convince myself that I view these appointments with a certain nonchalance, and every year I find that I've been unconsciously getting more and more tense as the time MLW takes her approaches. When I speak to her afterwords, I can almost feel myself unclenching.

That night, the mini-BG and I walked to our local park. I watched as she chased after fireflies, an insect she's only really discovered this summer. She was completely unmindful of the monitor and the leads that were taped to her chest, her concentration focused solely on those brief glowing flashes. I watched, and thought back, and was thankful.

Children Are Our Future

So, the mini-BG occasionally goes to a nearby museum that has nifty child-focused activities during the week. One afternoon she crafted what appeared, at first glance, to be two-thirds of a snowman. Its base was painted royal blue and it had two plastic beads for eyes.

When our nanny asked her what it was, she replied simply:

"It's art."

Got My Mind Set on You

I haven't had a new cell phone in...well, ever, actually. The one I use now is a cast-off of MLW's, who long ago left the realm of ordinary mobiles for the greener pastures of smartphones.

I was tempted to snag an iPhone when they first came out, but I was a little hesitant to pick one up because of AT&T's rather plodding network and I really didn't want to have to sacrifice one of my limbs in order to procure one.

Now the arbiter of geek chic has announced that both of my reasons for hesitation have been eliminated. So, I've been socking away money in the form of Apple gift cards, the new device is going to be released around my next birthday, and I soooooo want this.

Unfortunately, I'll be out of state on the day the phone is released, and Apple is now strongly pushing for in-store activation. Any of my intelligent readers know if it's possible to get a new number in your home area code regardless of where you're making your purchase?