Moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches..
We’ve bought a house!
Well, the contract is signed and the only thing we’re waiting on is finance, but we’ve been to the bank and their electronic assessment thingy says yes - we should get the official loan offer on Monday, and after that it’s all official.
The new house is in Lauderdale, an area I don’t think I’d ever noticed until we first looked there for houses a few months ago. I really liked what I saw, even though we didn’t find a suitable house in our price range.
The weekend before last we headed down there again, as there were three open homes being held in the same street within an hour and a half of each other, all in our price range. The first two houses were nothing special but the last one really wowed us - in the end we made an offer, did a bit of haggling, and got it at a price that we’re happy with.
It’s not huge, but it’s much bigger than our current place. It has a decent sized kitchen that’s actually set out well for cooking, three bedrooms with built-ins and plenty of storage. One big bonus is that it has a home office attached to a garage out the back, which is something I really wanted but didn’t think we’d get in our price range.
The location is good - one street from the beach yet still only 15-20 minutes to Hobart. The block is flat with a pretty low maintenance garden, and there are covered concreted areas for BBQs.
And the final cool thing about it - it’s a handful of houses down the same side of the street as the new house of some very good friends of ours! We didn’t realise how close it was until we went by their new place to check it out, but I’m really looking forward to living within walking distance of friends again.
Probably not for everyone..
Heinlein is acknowledged as one of the greats of science fiction, and yet I think this is the first book of his that I’ve read. I saw it on the shelf in a second-hand book store, and picked it up purely because I recognised his name.
First, a note on the title: it’s “Job” as in the biblical book of Job (rhymes with “robe”, or at least it did when I was doing bible study).
The story is about a man, Alexander Hergensheimer, who participates in a fire walk and comes out the other side into a world that is different to his own. In this world people recognise him as Alec Graham, but he has no idea who this man is or what has happened to him. In the end it doesn’t matter, because the phenomenon of shifting into different worlds continues and Alex (accompanied by his new lover Margrethe, the stewardess) doesn’t stay in any one place long enough that his lack of identity is a problem.
One of the side-effects of this world shifting process is that it usually renders his money worthless. When the world shifts the global political landscape changes, and notes marked “United States of America” are useless if that part of the world is known as the “North American Union” in this universe. As a consequence Alex and Margrethe are always broke, and have to work for their meals and lodging. The only job he can get (quickly, with no recognised qualifications) is as a dishwasher - and somehow it seems that dishwashers are needed everywhere they go.
As the title hints, religion is a strong theme throughout this book. Alexander was an ordained minister in his own universe, a universe dominated by extremely right-wing fundamentalist Christians. No, even worse than our universe.
Alex’s views on morality and religion are obviously coloured by his past, but his exposure to worlds with much more liberal views on many issues causes him to question whether all that he’s been taught to believe is true.
In the end he learns something of the value of love and tolerance over strict adherence to inflexible dogma.
Possibly this was not the best introduction to Heinlein’s work. It’s science fiction only in the broadest sense, in that it uses parallel universes as a plot device. There’s no science involved at all though, and I usually prefer SF with some basis in reality.
The religious element of the story is really the central theme, and this book is at heart a satire critical of fundamentalist Christian churches. Heinlein has either done a lot of research, or was brought up with a strong religious background - I’m not sure which - but I wonder how much of the book is accessible to those without a reasonable level of familiarity with the Bible.
I felt that the ending of the book was rushed, and a copout. There’s a real deus ex machina thing going on, and while the ending is much more clearly (and unsubtly) satire than the rest of the book, I found it unconvincing and unsatisfying.
All in all, I’d only recommend this book to Heinlein fans or those with enough familiarity with the Bible to appreciate the many biblical references. I’ll have to try one of Heinlein’s better known works next time.
Sebastian Update.
In my last post about life as a parent I mentioned that we were looking after Sebastian in shifts.Well, we’re not really doing that anymore because we’re trying to increase Mum’s milk production by expressing even when there’s not enough for a feed, and for now that means it takes two of us to feed him at 2AM. Lou expresses milk, and I feed him a bottle of formula.
The end result is that neither of us ever gets to sleep for more than 4 hours consecutively, even if he sleeps the whole way in between feeds. But hey, at least I don’t have to get up for the 6AM feed. Although when I get back to work it’d be much better to be getting up at 6AM and sleep through the 2AM feed.. we’ll have to see how things go.
Ok, on to the big question that people have seemed to want to ask me as a new Dad - “How are you coping with the nappies?”
This is usually said with a bit of a smirk, or a sly and knowing grin. Well the truth is that so far they’ve been no trouble at all. I changed his first nappy, a parenting milestone which has acheived some notoriety due to the baby passing meconium from its bowels, and the fact that meconium has the consistency of warm vegemite. So this was expected, we cleaned it off and I coped.
Subsequent nappies have changed in consistency, but they still don’t really smell at all. I’m told that changes once babies start eating solid food, but hopefully I can cope with that as well.
His behaviour has been pretty good, and we usually don’t have too much trouble settling him. I think it’s helped that we’ve tried to set up routine feeding times, I’m not sure how much notice he’s taking but it’s working for us at least.
Mostly though I’m just tired. We drove out to Lauderdale today to look at a few open homes, and I felt it much harder than usual to concentrate on the road. Not that I think I was in any danger of falling asleep at the wheel, but I can definitely feel the effects of not getting enough sleep. Well, maybe I’ll just have to get used to this - I don’t know. I can’t claim I wasn’t warned about that one, either.
Quickies can be good!
I saw this book on the shelf in the local Target one day. It was only about $10, and I’d heard of it even though I didn’t know anyone who’d read it, so I picked it up. I actually bought it specifically to give away, as my first Bookcrossing release.
The Five People Your Meet In Heaven is a tiny book with a big title. It’s only 208 pages long, and very easy going - you could probably read it in an afternoon if you weren’t interrupted.
This book tells the story of a man named Eddie, and begins with his death. Eddie - not a particularly religious man - finds himself in Heaven, but not any Heaven such as he had imagined. He is met by someone who explains to him that he will meet with five people who will explain his life to him.
Eddie discovers that his life had touched others in ways he didn’t expect, and that our smallest actions can have profound effects on the lives of others.
The story could easily have got out of hand, and become overly sentimental, preachy, or even trite. However the author successfully strikes a balance that results in a truly poignant tale, which makes its points in a reasonably understated fashion.
I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this book, but my fears were definitely unfounded. Now all I have to do is bring myself to give it away.
I always wanted to work night shift..
I’ve just managed to get Sebastian off to sleep, for now. Since getting home from hospital Lou and I have taken to looking after him in shifts. One of us will take the “early” shift (from evening until 1AM-ish), and the other will take the “late” shift (which means looking after him until it’s time to get up).
I think I’ve done a couple of each now, and I prefer the early shift. No suprises there, I guess! It’s definitely easier to stay awake a bit longer, no matter HOW tired you are, than to wake up at 3 in the morning and have to spend an hour and a half feeding, changing and settling a baby. Although this morning I managed to get him sorted and back to sleep (and get back in my own bed) within 40 minutes - my best time yet, although I didn’t feed him that time.
The shift approach has worked mostly because we’ve had to resort to giving him feeds with formula to “top him up” at night. Lou is having trouble producing enough milk to keep the little man satisfied, though we’re still trying suggestions from the various midwives and lactation consultants to see if we can improve things. I guess it could also work if Lou expresses milk during the day for me to feed him at night, but so far there hasn’t been enough for that to be an option.
In other news, I installed a WordPress plugin to support something called structured blogging. The entry before this one was made using the plugin, in which I wrote a book review for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. The idea behind the plugin is to add machine-readable structured formatting to the entry content, so that it can be automatically parsed and categorised by other sites.
In the book review context, this will eventually mean being able to search the web for reviews of a certain title, and get back results not only from Amazon and the like but from anyone who cared to post a review. This kind of works at the moment, but it’s a guess by the search engine with a lot of hit & miss involved. Searching through structured entries would mean that you can filter out anything that’s not a book review (but might still mention the book, for instance), or sort the reviews by score. You could even combine this with other structured content on the page such as a GeoURL to search for reviews by location.
There are a lot of cosmetic changes I’d like to make to this site, and I’ll get around to it eventually, but the ability to add this sort of structured content functionality is the main reason I wanted to get it back up and running on my own domain in the first place.
Some great reading, if you can spare the time..
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a fantasy story unlike any I have ever read. Admittedly I am not the worlds most widely read fantasy fan, but this is certainly something different.
The premise is that two aristocratic and scholarly gentlemen restore the practice of magic to 19th century England. Magic had, up to this point, declined until it was a purely theoretical pursuit - but the insecure (and yet extremely egotistical) Mr. Norrell resolves to bring back practical magic. While no other magician can attain the standards he requires of a practical magician, he is eventually persuaded to take on an apprentice, Jonathan Strange.
Strange has real talent - but soon enough both personal and professional clashes, as well as Strange’s increasing successes as a magician in his own right, drive a wedge between them which results in the two becoming adversaries.
This is a fantastic book with a wonderfully dry sense of humour, and a somewhat florid style evocative of Jane Austen. The style suits the period of the novel very well, and the regular footnotes take the reader on diversions large and small which help immerse you in the world which the author has created.
I enjoyed this book so much that it seems petty to offer any complaint, but if I had to name one it would be that the book is too long. At 782 pages this is not an afternoon read, and I cannot help but feel that the story could have been told just as effectively in less space. It must be difficult to maintain the pace of a story in which much of the plot is brought forward by conversations in drawing rooms, but other sections of the story move along quite quickly and ultimately I found the uneven pace distracting.
All of the characters were well fleshed out, though I felt that I was left wanting for more information on some of the more enigmatic supporting characters. Perhaps the author will oblige with the sequel, though it may be some time before we see that.
All in all though, this was a thoroughly good read and I’d recommend it to anyone with the spare time required to make it through.
More Photos!
So much to say, so little time!
Our new family arrived home today a little bit after 11 this morning. It’s still all a bit surreal, but Sebastian has cooperated by being a little angel ever since we got home. No doubt this means we’re in for a rough night!
We’re about to head off to take a look at some little swing devices, because Baz apparently loved the swinging hammock they had in the nursery at the hospital.
Ok, here are more photos!
Sleeping..
Still Sleeping..
Not yet awake.
The toys.. so far.
So yeah, basically he’s gorgeous, and the most perfect little baby ever created.
A note on toys - daddy is going to have to institute a new rule that we do not buy fluffy toys, because other people are buying them for us!
On his first day home the fluffy toy role call consists of:
- 6 bears
- 3 felines
- 3 dogs
- 1 lamb
- 1 donkey
- 1 bunny
- 1 streptococcus bacteria cuddly toy
We’re Parents!
First, the vital stats:
Sebastian John Raymond was born at 8:31AM, March 3rd, 2005. He weighed 4725g, or 10lb 6oz in the old language. Many thanks to Dr Campbell and the wonderful staff at Calvary Hospital.
Ok, no time to talk - I have to get back to the hospital. In the meantime, check these out..
Newborns are messy.
A Very Proud Dad.
Our First Family Photo.
Sound Asleep (6 hours old)
Oh, I forgot to mention..
One of the things I haven’t written much about is our impending parenthood. Well, we’re booked in for a caesarian tomorrow morning - so it’s a bit late now.
But I guess I’ll have a lot more to say about it from now on!
That was quick..
Ok, we’re back quicker than I expected. I’ve just installed WordPress, as it seems to be a pretty popular choice for blogging software, it’s open source, and it’s written in PHP. All good things.
When I originally moved from static html to some form of automated posting system, there wasn’t really any software out there which was suitable for the job. So like many other people I just wrote my own. Over time I came up with lists of things I wanted to change about it, but I didn’t really have the time and anything significant would have required rewriting my hacked together piece of junk from scratch.
I took my site down for a while after an incident which I’ve probably written about somewhere, and eventually started writing a new journal on the LiveJournal site. That experience convinced me never to bother writing my own posting system again, because theirs was much better and the amount of effort required to reimplement it would be siginificant.
However I’ve decided to relaunch my journal under my own domain, because, well.. why have a domain, otherwise? The answer is email, of course, but if I’m going to have a website anyway it may as well be under my own domain. Plus, blogging has matured a bit now and I’m interested in the automated tools that link sites together, the whole “semantic web” thing. Livejournal has a lot of interlinking going on, but it’s mostly contained within the Livejournal community. And finally, I wanted flexibility to do anything I felt like with my site, and hosting it separately is the best way to do that.
So, here we are. I guess now I’ll have to start importing all my old journal entries. There’s probably an automated way to do that from Livejournal (at least I hope there is), but I’m guessing I’ll have to write some code to get the entries from my old site imported into here. Or do it by hand, but that’d be boring - I’ve always preferred spending twice as long writing code to do something that I could do manually in half the time. 