Walls come tumbling down

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February 2002

February 2002

Is it too early to say that we have escaped with a very mild winter? Or will the very act of me writing this facilitate the onslaught of several feet of snow being unceremoniously deposited directly atop my (now even balder) head? Well, I will tentatively say that we have escaped with next to no snow and a minimal number of days where your face hurts it's so cold. Fantastic but not unprecedented. Now bring on spring so we can get outside and into the garden. Not having the protection of being a virtual permafrost this year, the dogs have done a fair job of tearing up the grass. It will take some work to repair it.

I spent a week in San Diego while Natzoid, kids and dogs were at her mum's. Natzoid arrived back with another dog, Bowie. Bowie is Sasha's and Stella's runt sister. The two monsters that we have aren't enough? Bowie is more vocal than her sisters, much smaller and much more nervous...I'm told that this is normal in runts of litters.

Zoe's vocabulary is progressing quite nicely. I was very proud to hear her utter her first full sentence "we wuv daddy". Touching, until you realize that she doesn't understand what she's saying...this morning I heard her shouting "we wuv poop". She has also mastered her first three-syllable word - "thunderdome" - don't ask me why! As I type, I can hear the Bean upstairs screaming "we wuv daddy". What a kid. When Natzoid and I first met, we discussed what kind of kid we would produce. Thus far, our predictions are right; I have very high hopes for Beanie.

Samantha's report card was excellent. We are fortunate in that the only criticism that can be levelled at her is that she needs to work on being neat. I'm sure that we're not the only parents who think that she should spend more time reading and less watching TV but her teacher doesn't see the amount of reading she does as a problem and thinks her TV watching is normal. Further proof that I was never a kid, or that my memory is distant and dim.

Garisson Keillor says that nothing that you do for kids is wasted. They are some great words of comfort to those of us that aren't convinced of their parenting ability.

It's tax season and as usual, Natzoid has worked her magic. With the proceeds of the refund, we're planning a trip to the UK for a week over Easter weekend. We're going to see my family and do some nosying around graveyards, record offices to try to expand our genealogical knowledge. We're also going to assemble all of the Gorners that we can. Last week, we received a letter from a related Gorner who knew my great-great-grandfather and had some fascinating stories. Unfortunately the last of my grandfather's siblings died this week.

We have traced my mother's father's family back to one John Gorner who was born in 1796 and married Mary Bolton in 1822. Apparently, this is good going as many people in the UK have trouble getting back that far. It helps that Gorner is a fairly unusual name and they all pretty much stayed in the same town in the UK. I have a sneaking suspicion that prior to living around Wigan in the UK, the Gorners were in and around Preston; we have found them in Salmesbury but cannot yet link them to our Gorners. If only we knew John's parents! Perhaps when we visit the UK we'll find out?

I have a checklist of things that I want to do in the UK, most of which are related to food and drink. English bacon, Hollands' steak and kidney puddings, mushy peas and Stella Artois feauture heavily in the list. As a Brit in America, there are certain American customs and products that I will never grow to accept. American beer is totally undrinkable...freezing cold fizzy water. I cannot become enthused about American football either. I hate the holiday ration that American companies so ungenerously give (and then deduct for illness). But the rest is great and the minor inconveniences are tolerable when weighed against the gripes that I had in the UK.

Work continues to frustrate me. I have a job and I can't complain about the pay (even though I'm on a mandatory 95% at the moment due to the slow-down) but I don't have a career. I'm an insurance policy for the company, pure and simple. I have a couple of outstanding job applications in the ether and have made some contact with some very helpful ex-colleagues.

I wonder whether I should return to the world of writing code for a living? I don't want to mess with C++ but writing PHP, Perl or Javascript seems like it would be fun. Unfortunately, as I was reminded only this week by my old managing director, you can do it but you lose hours of your life without noticing; you look up and 6 hours of your life are missing. If you do that on a regular basis, just think of how much of this one-time offer you miss out on. Then again, how much time do I spend writing web pages and messing around on the 'net? It's fun and better for your brain than endless TV.