I am out of the habit when it comes to blogging. Life has sped up for me to such a degree that it is difficult to find time and even more difficult to pick a topic. I told my coworkers the other day that in the past year I’ve gotten married, am starting my second new job, bought a house, and am expecting a baby. We are only missing one of life’s major stressors on that list – knock on wood – I just hope it’s not me.

You most want to know about the baby. We have ordered the crib and the infant car seat and are registering for the older kid car seat. Unpacking has gone well enough that we have finally found floor in the nursery and are thus able to begin set up. With an October 16th due date, we are in the home stretch for parenthood. Elliot has been quite interactive and responds to my voice and to music. His favorite song at the moment is “I’m Gonna Dig Myself a Hole” by Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup off the Atomic Platters box set. It’s a jumping song and he has the rhythm down.


He responds very actively to music he likes. I want him to like Jazz more than he does, but I’ll settle for the Blues. It goes against the conventional Rock & Roll wisdom on these things, which would presume him to be too young for the blues, but as he is yet to be in his first pair of shoes I think we may have a loophole. He is doing fine and all signs point to a healthy baby and birth. Again, knock on wood.

St. Louis is in the middle of a heat wave right now and so we’ve tried to minimize our time outside. Jes gets tired very easily. I’ve bought a sprinkler and have been doing a little gardening in the morning or early evening. We only have one contiguous neighbor and he has erected a rather large fence. He told me they planned to build it when I first moved in and insists it’s not an anti-neighborly gesture. Good fences make good neighbors is my sentiment, though one of his posts is on my property sans request. As he did the work without a permit, I am guessing that an easement won’t be forthcoming. Ah well, tis the city indeed. In the bargain I’ve gained a nice fence that I didn’t have to pay for.

We’ve been spending a fair amount of money on getting all the systems working. We bought a half price AC unit from Lowe’s to cool the upstairs, as the central air unit hasn’t been able to keep up with the triple digit temperatures. My folks are in town for roughly a week for a Papua New Guinea Mission Society Meeting and to spend time with family. They are sleeping under the new AC and it seems to be working fine. It’s not a great time to be social with me as I am lost in the land of class planning. Over the next few weeks there is going to be no break in that action.

We have a guy coming Friday to recover the pool table and I found an amazing deal on Amazon for a package set of billiards accessories that should be here just in time for next weekend.




It has everything we’ll need from the table cover to a bridge (pool balls and four two piece cues). The lounge is coming along nicely – we want it to be ready when Elliot is born since we won’t be leaving the house for at least three months.

To cement that locked in feeling, we’ve upgraded the security system to the point that the house at times feels more than a tad futuristic – ala Picard discoursing with his computer. We have a British woman embedded in our wall who announces the operation of all apertures. I can change her declarations to a simple tone, but for the time being I find her observations on transit to be amusing, “Front Door - beep beep - ”. We’ve agreed to be an advertising home for G.E. and got our upgraded equipment for free as a result.

Ah, well. I need to get back to work on my syllabi. More from the trenches at another time….