I really should set my own blog as my homepage, if for no other reason than it would remind me to post every now and then. My job has been sucking up every spare hour for the last couple weeks, as I move between the urgent tailing phase of a new product moving from market launch to a subsequent product in the development phase. It’s very stressful, but at the same time, I really enjoy the feeling of moving forward. As a bonus, I’ll be spending a few days at the Photographic Marketing Association (PMA) trade show in Vegas in March, hawking our current product and checking out the competition. Jennifer will join me at some point, so we might be able to see a show or do something else fun.

I have been gearing up lately to take Tara’s two-year portrait. I say that as though she is on some sort of regular schedule, but I have not rigorously been doing portraits of either of the kids. I don’t think it has anything to do with the second-child syndrome so much as my own personal diminished snap count. Believe me, if I were taking pictures, they would be of my girls. In any case, I’m planning to take a picture of Tara in the next few weeks, trying to capture what a big girl she is now. She surprises me in her desire to be a big kid–I guess this is the effect of having an older sister. She does puzzles and plays with her toys like an older child. She has a tremendous vocabulary. And holy crap, she’s just a hoot. So how do I capture that in a photo? Wait.

Jennifer and I both had Martin Luther King Day off from work, which made for a three day weekend. Dr. King was actually born on January 15th, so this is one of the years in which the national holiday coincides with his birthday. If I do something amazing such that my birthday is celebrated as a national holiday, I want it celebrated on the day every year. Just saying.

For the last several months I’ve struggled with writing about my kids; particularly Anna. She is getting to an age now where I think she has some right to privacy and it won’t be very long before she is able to read all this stuff I’m writing about her. Yet, she’s not quite old enough to grasp the concept of “everybody” when I say that everybody can read this. In any case, if she were able to grasp what sort of people there are on teh internets, she probably would not be favorable to me blathering away about her. I’m really not the blathering type anyway, at least not in person.

I can, however talk about myself and say that I have been doing a lot of blog reading these days. Apart from techy stuff and my friends’ blogs and the always funny Scott Adams, I read Dreamdust, Jonniker. There are so many good writers out there, but just like people you tend to gravitate toward some for reasons unknown.

For our long weekend we were mostly hunkered down in the house because it has been unacceptably cold. I was out on Saturday night and the temperature was below freezing when I got home, which I’m sure must be a violation of some city ordinance. I went out this morning in the backyard, but quickly moved to the south-facing front of the house with Anna, so my foray into long pants was happily short lived, as the weather turned warm finally. I managed to straighten up in the garage while Anna painted some contraption she had made by gluing pieces of wood together. I convinced her to let it dry on top of the garbage can for now, and she didn’t seem to catch on that was mostly for my own convenience.

I’m glad to be facing only a four-day week of work, but I have to admit that things are less crazy busy than they used to be. I’m now at a part of the project were I don’t have any significant deadlines facing me. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have a ton of work to do–I really do–but I have some flexibility about what I do and when I do it because nothing in particular is on fire at this time. It’s a nice feeling. For me it’s a relief not having to rein in my technological wanderlust in order to meet deadlines. I really like to flow from problem to problem; it’s the situation where I do my best work. Some day, I hope to land some sort of dream job in which I only have to complete the first 20% of any given

It sure seems like there is a lot of buzz going on around the iPhone. I won’t provide any links because at this point you could probably do a google search for “potted meat” and find links to the iPhone and how it is either the greatest or worst device ever. I’ve looked at the demos and a couple reviews and the thing I can say for sure that Apple did (and has always done) is put the user interface as the most significant feature. Some handset makers like Motorola and HTC like to sell their hardware specs first and foremost to distract you from the fact that their user interface is trash, which you don’t find out until after you bought the phone because it’s super-thin or because it makes espresso.

In any case, I won’t be buying an iPhone, and not because it’s $600, or because it’s only on Cingular. It looks hella cool, but Apple and Cingular are both companies with a history of lock-in. I don’t want a device that will do whatever I want, but charges me $0.99 every time I do it. I want to pay for the hardware up front (or on a contract with fixed costs) and hack away from then on, without restriction. Apple learned from the iPod that it’s more profitable to sell services than either software or hardware. The iPhone won’t be any different. If you’re getting an iPhone for $499 or $599, you better save some extra nickels and dimes, because you’re going to need them.

I started back to work one Tuesday after a week off and I swear when I got there, I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. A week off of work will do that to you. At least I remembered some of my passwords. After about two hours, I remembered what it is that I do: answer the phone, hold people’s hands, and clean up other people’s messes. Oh wait, no, apparently I’m supposed to be creating stuff.

I’ve been back at the low carb for a week and I remember now everything that’s good about low carb: a) it works, and b) I’m not hungry and c) I’m not tired. Everything else about it blows, but at least I’ll be done in a few months. So after the first week I’m down almost ten pounds, which will alarm people from the “anything worth doing is worthy doing slowly” school of thought.

This weekend (wild card weekend, for heaven’s sake!) I have felt like I’m neck-deep in children, for better or mostly worse. Some friends’ kids spent the night on Saturday, but their little one was a little out of sorts, and when one parent has “man coverage” on one of four children, the other parent has to drop back and play zone. Against three kids. End zone dance anyone?

Although Tara was a little touchy today, probably from getting up too early, she’s the most entertaining a person who still soils herself can possibly be (sorry, college buddies!). This morning playing puzzles with her, I could clearly see the influence of her older sister when she successfully inserted a piece into her shape puzzle, then held up her arms and said “Yay trapezoid! I win!” I fully expect to hear her say “In your face, quatrefoil!” before she turns two next month. She doesn’t have the clear speech that Anna had at this age, but she sure knows a lot of words. Also, at some point in the last week Tara successfully peed on the potty. Note that she did not pee entirely in the potty, but she was there, the potty was there, and the pee was definitely there and there and over there too.

Anna has long been inclined to do crafty sort of activities, but she is really starting to express herself in drawings and writing. Since she’s learning to read and write, she likes to make little books with her own text and illustrations. She sometimes asks for help spelling words and sometimes just wings it, and it’s still mostly intelligible. We’re going to have quite a library of her work eventually. Last week she made a bunch of flyers saying “I like egg,” which she rolled up and distributed to the neighbors with the help of her grandmother. They all have children so I assume they’ll understand when a five year old shows up at the door along with a lady they’ve never seen and hands them “I like egg” on a piece of construction paper. Who wouldn’t?

Last night we went to a family-style New Years’ Eve party. Family-style means it started at 4:00 and we left by 7:30. I did bring a pitcher of sangria from a recipe Jennifer got from a friend who got it from a Barcelona hotel. Everyone absolutely loved it, saying such things as “Is that iced tea?” and “This is really good! Is there alcohol in it?” and “Good Lord, what did you put in this?” and “I can’t feel my lips anymore.” I was designated as playgroup bartender and invited to bring a pitcher of sangria to any future playgroup event. Thus, I present you Hotel Arts Sangria so that you may be the hit of your next party.

• 1 bottle cheap red wine. We used Lucas Vineyards Tugboat Red, which is so sweet and fruity that anyone who knows anything about wine probably hates it.
• 1 cup very fine sugar
• 1 cup brandy
• 1 cup cointreau
• 1 cup vodka
• 1 (12 oz) can lemonade concentrate and 2 cans water
• 1 lemon, cut up
• 1 orange, cut up
• 1 apple, cut up

Dump everything into a one-gallon pitcher and stir. Fill rest of pitcher with ice. Pour into cups and exchange for car keys. Stay away from open flame.