jonathanhickman.com

Whom do you google?

Last week, Katie and I got into a discussion about exes, and I spent ten minutes googling a few of mine. I have also googled approximately one person I went to college with, with no success. I’ve never thought to look up anyone from high school, but a friend sent me a link a while back to the blog of a high school acquaintance.

That makes one person in my feed reader who I knew in a past life. I wish I had more friends or former friends with blogs, but I rarely even bother looking people up.

Who do you google?

Then I’ll be ready

Last night, Katie asked me if I was ready for Charlotte. The due date is the last week in August, and Katie is trying to prepare herself for a late arrival while I’m just praying we make it to next Friday - the earliest day we can deliver at the birthing center.

I’ve been thinking about this “are you ready” question, and I didn’t hesitate to answer no. No I’m not ready. It’s becoming more and more clear to me that Charlotte really is going to be born soon and that she really does exist. Soon I really will be getting less sleep and soon we really will be fighting over whose lap she can rest in while we hang out on the couch at night.

But also, this whole thing seems very hypothetical. I know there’s a little girl inches away from me as I sleep. And I’ve felt her kick and punch her mama many times. But I haven’t heard a peep from her, and I’ve yet to look her in the eyes. I can feel her moving, but I can’t kiss her on her little forehead or play with her baby toes.

In some ways, I guess I am ready - as ready as I’ll ever be, at least. But really it just blows my mind to know that soon we’ll have a little girl with us. And she won’t be a niece or a neighbor who comes over to hang out for a while and then goes home.

I think it’ll take a few nights of looking her in the eyes and having her still there in the morning before it really sinks in. Then I guess I’ll be ready.

And stay down!

Katie just got back from seeing the midwife. The baby has flipped yet again and is now head down, as she’s supposed to be.

Every time she goes head down, she has flipped back at some point. She’s already making her father nervous, and she’s not even born yet.

This time, she’d better stay down, or she’ll be grounded until she’s 16!

And don’t even think about asking me for the car keys, young lady.

I know where to eat!

Here.

via.

Walk score

My neighborhood has a walk score of 55.

And I think it really should be higher, especially for the area.

How does your neighborhood score?

It’s like I’m punished for napping

Our office has a policy that naps are ok, and it’s a good policy. I take a quick nap after work, and assuming it doesn’t get too hot in here, I feel better for the rest of the day.

But over the last few months, I’ve been having carpal tunnel problems with my right wrist. I’ve mostly gotten it under control, but nothing seems to keep my right hand from falling asleep when I nap.

Now, when I wake from a nap, my right hand tingles for 10-15 minutes. It’s not pleasant.

Where would you eat out?

My parents tend to take us out to eat maybe once a week. The gesture is nice, and it’s good to see everybody. But we have the most difficulty finding a good place to eat, as I’ve mentioned before. One family member is allergic to anything onion or cooked in the same oil as onions. Another family member refuses anything with garlic. And my parents loathe alcohol.

That pretty much kills off Italian food or anything with real flavor. We eat at Chilis and Applebees, Silver Spoon and the Texas Roadhouse. We occasionally eat Mexican, when I’m lucky, although burritos sans alcohol is kind of less than. On a really good day it’s Littons or Aubrey’s, but generally the fault finders can find huge faults with any place I might want to eat.

So where would you go? Is there maybe a good restaurant I’m forgetting that has some bland offerings, or should I just be content with the company?

Making my blog a priority

Over the last few weeks, I really haven’t been blogging much, and I’ve tried to figure out why. I thought maybe nothing interesting was going on, but that’s really never stopped me from blogging before. And it’s not that I don’t spend enough time on the computer, because I work here. And I definitely find the time to read most blogs.

And that’s the problem. I’ve been making reading a higher priority than writing. I’ve made other blogs more important than mine. So I’m going to reverse the process. Instead of reading everything first thing in the morning and then really needing to get some work done, I’m going to blog and then see what I can read before having to work.

We’ll see how it goes.

Having my cake and air conditioning it, too

Here at our office, we like to leave the windows open in the morning and have the a/c in the afternoon. The problem is, this building is about 2500 sq feet, and half of that is upstairs.

We have new a/c units upstairs and down, and the one upstairs simply isn’t cutting it. My guess was we really needed better insulation in the attic, but the a/c guy said no. Leave the a/c running 24-7. Don’t adjust it for the weekend, don’t adjust for nights when you’re not there, and definitely don’t leave the windows open in the morning because the air conditioner can’t do it. And instead of poor insulation upstairs, our ultimate problem is the heat rising from below, so it’s extra important to keep the a/c on down there.

I’m definitely no a/c guy, but I thought our main problems are that it won’t keep it cool in the afternoon no matter what and it’s very hot in my office even while the thermostat thinks it’s done its job.

I guess we’ll try it their way for a week and see if we can’t convince them they’re wrong. I really want to be able to have the windows open on nice mornings. I hope they’re at least half wrong.

Weekend to do list

Yes, I’m already working on my weekend to do list. It felt so good getting so much done last weekend that I feel compelled to try to get a lot done this weekend as well. After all, soon I won’t want to be wasting my time on this stuff!

• Wax as many floors as possible. This is the big one. All of the floors downstairs need to be redone, but until that becomes a priority I need to protect what we’ve got; we’re a big family and have a lot of feet going over our floors. And this is definitely something I’m not going to want to worry about soon!
• Keep things clean. Now that we’re getting close to Charlotte’s due date, we not only need to get the house ready, we need to keep it ready.
• Mow the lawn and trim the hedges. I’ve been avoiding both of these, but I need to get them done.

Have I mentioned how cool my wife is?

Check out this list of articles she’s published.

Impressive.