It’s been forever since I’ve even thought about updating this blog. I guess I’ve been busy or something.

Anyway, I’ve been MUCH happier since moving back to Lakewood - the people here are much more diverse and intelligent than the carbon-copy sheep in Strongsville with their Posh Spice haircuts and matching minivans. It was slowly driving me insane….

My house is SO cute…a quaint 1920’s thing with hardwood floors and new windows in a really, really good neighborhood. I love watching all of the kids walk to school and the neighbors chatting with one another as they walk their dogs in the morning…it has such a homey feel to it. Interesting thing…even within the first couple of months of living here, I knew most of my neighbors. They were extremely friendly and offered to help during the moving process. Can’t say the same for that shithole of a hillbilly town we left behind…..

So…what’s been going on? Well, Gillian’s growing into an awesome little girl - such a cutie pie! We’re already looking into private schools and stuff since it seems to be hard to find one around here that isn’t religious. Gotta start early with this stuff, I’m told. I guess she could always go to public school but I figure why not go the extra mile? Beats wasting my $$$ on electronics and beer and stuff.

Job is the same. For the most part, all we do is go to the gym and eat snacks and hang out at each other’s cubes all day. I picked up a few extra projects but it still isn’t enough to fill the entire day. That’s corporate life - the higher up the ladder you go, the less actual work you do. David and I have been considering doing some independent consulting in our free time but so far I haven’t had the motivation to get cracking on that. Maybe once the soccer season is over I’ll consider it.

Well, enough of this. I got a new laptop for Xmas (Macbook Pro -very nice!) but the hard drive died so now I have to restore everything from backup. One thing I can say - the “Geniuses” at the Mac store had it fixed in about 24 hours, so I’m not too sad about it. The “restore” part is a pain, but c’est la vie. Better get cracking on it, I suppose.

The family and I spent ten days in “sunny” northern England recently and we had a good time (apart from the hospital visit and various airport catastrophes). It’s not easy traveling with an infant, but Gillian was a trooper. Poor little thing got tonsillitis and has her 1-year molars coming in, so it was a difficult journey for her. Lucky she won’t remember it!!

I enjoy visiting new places, but I am definitely glad to be home. It’s a little sad these days since we just lost one of our cats (old age got the best of her - she was 18 or 19) but I missed the heat of the summer while I was away. Plus, I think the remaining four cats really missed us.

Anyway, while I was in England, I purchased a prepaid quad-band GSM RAZR so that people could reach us when David and I were out and about. It was a steal, really - I think I paid £20 or £30 at Tesco. I wasn’t sure what I would do with it when I got back to the states since it was locked to Tesco Mobile in England, but I did a little “Internet Research” and found out that I could actually unlock the phone and use it with whatever network.

So I did. And now I have a new phone that works internationally! WOO HOO!

I also unlocked a Nokia 6101 that I had and David’s old Blackberry since his current one is dead. It seems stupid that phone companies should lock their phones, but I guess that’s why they offer up the actual phone for so cheap when you sign a 2-year contract.

Once again, I am too busy to write down what’s going on. There are so many things happening, but one of the most exciting events is that Gillian turned 1!! My, how things have changed for David and I! Gillian has been just wonderful- really, you couldn’t ask for a better baby. I’m so happy that she’s a part of our lives, because I honestly don’t know what I’d do without her. There’s something so magnificent about being a mother… one just can’t explain, you have to experience it to know.

Anyway, enough sappiness… we also have lots of other things going on. Next weekend we’re off to see my cousin Abbie get married, and the week after that we’re off to visit Grandma and Grandpa Coulson in the UK. I’m not looking forward to the long plane trip with baby in tow, but somehow we’ll make it through. It will be nice to see the family again, and I’m sure it will be especially nice for David to see his childhood home again (it’s been a LONG time since he’s been back there).

I’ve also tried to pick up some of my old hobbies to get my mind off of computers. I’ve got some knitting projects of course, but I also bought my brother-in-law’s Gibson off of him so I can start playing the guitar again. I’ve also collected a bunch of broken iPods because it’s fun to repair them. So far, I’ve rebuilt three. And I’ve also found a lot of good video editing software for my “Hackintosh” so I can start editing all of those soccer games I filmed a few months ago (as well as copying YouTube crap onto my video iPod). Oh, and I’m working on a gallery for my Cleveland architecture photo collection and I’m reading a couple of good sci-fi novels. So I keep busy with things, and sometimes I do work as well! I still haven’t managed to get a workout schedule going, but the pressure’s on from my friends to get my fat ass back into the gym so I guess I’m going to have to get cracking with that one of these days.
We also went to Geauga Lake the other day, which was a BLAST! Seriously, I could go there every day. Actually, I used to go there every day when I was a kid, but that was forever ago…. I don’t think David would care for the heat and the rides, but Gillian sure did like it!

Oh well…off to bed. I’m getting into this nasty habit of not sleeping these days….:-)

Somewhere along the way, this calm but opinionated little baby we call Gillian turned into an even more opinionated and active little pre-toddler. She refuses to 1.) eat anything resembling a vegetable 2.) sleep unless it’s dark outside 3.) stay in one place for any length of time. To say she is active is a gross understatement!

Needless to say, David and I are completely fried from chasing after her day after day. Who knew someone so small could pack such a punch!

My laptop died after I accidentally dropped it for the very last time. Good thing is, it can be repaired. Bad thing is, it’s not under warranty anymore and thus it’s gonna cost $300 no matter what’s wrong with it. I guess I could pull it apart and repair it myself but I just don’t have the time and energy for that sort of thing anymore. Besides, HP will pretty much replace the entire bottom half of the thing for the $300 fee, and the repairs have a 90-day warranty after that.
It may just be time to replace it, but these days I have next to no expendable income for those types of things. Guess I’ll have to suck it up for now and take the $300 chance on HP….

Everyone here at the homestead caught a nasty case of stomach flu. I seemed to have gotten through it the quickest (about 24 hours) but Gillian and David are still suffering the ill effects. You would expect that day care would have been the cause of our infection, but it was actually the doctor’s office this time. Damn polio vaccine ended up being more trouble than it was worth this time!

So now we are all rehydrating with Gatorade and water (PediaLyte for Gillian). Poor Gilly was so dehydrated that she was sucking the water out of her washcloth in the bath! We finally figured out a way to administer the PediaLyte in a way she would drink it (I guess she didn’t care for the taste) and her thirst was quickly quenched. Hopefully she and David will be better soon!

My schedule has been super-crazy for the past few months - and it shows no signs of letting up! I honestly don’t know what day it is anymore.

For the past four weekends I have had to work. First weekend, there was a scheduled outage so that went okay. Second weekend was another scheduled outage that didn’t go so good. Now I’m on call, and someone else’s boxes are dying a slow death.

I hate computers. I really, really do.

Amazing as it may sound, I actually managed to read a work of fiction yesterday. I can’t remember the last time I read an entire book that wasn’t technical - I think the last time was when I was off on maternity leave (I would often read while I was breastfeeding to kill time).

Someone suggested Farnham’s Freehold by Heinlein, and since this person alluded to a controversial theme in the book, I was instantly driven to read it. So I did. I started it Friday night and finished it up Saturday afternoon, and although it was fairly dated (it was written in the early 60’s and had a nuclear holocaust-type theme) it was a pretty good read. I guess the theme would be considered controversial, but it wasn’t as thrilling as one might expect. In a nutshell, the main character ends up in the future where “people of color” are the superior race and white people are slaves… but there’s more to it than that.

So that was my experience with reading fiction this week, and it was pleasant. I tried to find other books to read at Border’s today, but the selection was woefully pathetic. Nothing but tacky ol’ chick lit as far as the eye can see. I equivocate chick lit with Harlequin romances in that they all seem to have the same drab characters (pulled straight from an episode of Sex and The City, no doubt) and the same boring themes usually involving a thirty-something single white female of some sort. Try as I might (I’m being facetious - of course I’m not going to try at all) I can’t get into those things. Maybe I’ll hit the downtown library when the weather gets better - I’m bound to find something a bit more enjoyable there.

I can’t stop listening to Of Montreal. I know, I know… but they are so…ADDICTIVE!

Please, whatever you do, DON’T buy Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? because you will pop it on your iPod, then you will listen, and before you know it you’ll be bobbing to the catchy beats at your desk or doing a little jig as you walk to catch the 4:05 train home… embarrassing.

The only thing I can say about this weekend is that I wasn’t so drunk that I don’t remember everything…but I was pretty plastered. My friend Jen left for Dallas on Saturday, so Friday night we went out to see her off. She kept buying us shot after shot after shot… combine that with Christmas Ale, and we were all pretty shit-faced. There was a ton of drama that night that I didn’t get involved in… but since Bill was the instigator everyone automatically lumped me in with his antics. I know I always side with him because he’s my friend, but it actually wasn’t his fault.
Anyway, I won’t go into all of that because it’s too long and drawn out. There was also some things that went on with Crickett’s boyfriend, but I don’t want to talk about Justin because it’s just too sad. Besides, there’s nothing I can do for either situation - I can’t bring Crickett back, I can’t ease Justin’s pain and I can’t make other people not freak out about stupid things.
The one thing that does worry me is my friend Jen. It concerns me that a person would throw themselves so completely into a relationship with someone they really don’t know so soon after a divorce. My belief is that some people (especially women) identify themselves by being a couple with someone instead of having their own identity, and once one guy is gone they immediately feel the need to find another to fill the void. Of course, there’s always the “rebound” thing that comes into play after a breakup….