Life is too short to blog. At least it has been lately. Things have been terribly busy at work, as usual, and our home has been in disarray for weeks. Every day there are one or two packages on our doorstep, and the pile at the door is now as tall as I am. I’m not complaining, but when you don’t have time to unbox Christmas presents, what does that say about how busy you are? Sending Christmas presents? Ha. This morning we’re sending the kids over to a friend’s house so that we can convert the big pile of boxes into a treeful of presents.

Further, I’m coming down with a cold. Tara has had it for a few days, and it doesn’t seem very pleasant. She and I haven’t been sick in a while.

Jennifer and I have independently been sorting through the years’ photos and video. There’s a lot of good stuff there and I hope to get some slideshows together during the week we have off. I’ve given up on the crashtastic Photodex Proshow for putting my photos on DVD. I just bought the Photoshop/Premiere Elements bundle, and it only crashes so far when you try to import 8 GB worth of MJPEG videos. I’m trying now to transcode them to MPEG2 first to see if that works better.

Finally, Happy Birthday to my niece Lily, who turned zero this week.

But the end is in sight. I have been working every free moment to meet a deadline on Tuesday. Jen has been watching the girls while I have been working late nights, late mornings, late afternoons. At this point, I still have more work to do than I have time to do it in, but I believe I can present something reasonable.

Yesterday, Anna had her second dance recital. Photos will be posted soon.

This morning I just realized that on my upcoming trip to Washington DC, I’ll have a chance to attend a meditation session led by Tara Brach, the Buddhist teacher who inspired my daughter Tara’s name. I’m very excited for the chance to meet her and bring her a picture of my little girl.

Today is Father’s Day, an Jennifer just arrived home with Starbucks, so I’m going to go enjoy my day and hopefully I’ll have more chances to post in another week or so on vacation.

This is yet another post about how I am too busy to post. My new job is taking up what little free time I used to have; hopefully I can get a little closer to a 40 hour work week after my big deadline later this month. After the deadline, we have two weeks in the midwest, and I just today got a jury duty summons starting immediately after we get back. Ick. Lately I am constantly tired, and my day at work is fairly rushed from the moment I sit down to my desk, usually reaching a frenetic pace right before I’m supposed to leave, then I finally tear myself away from the middle of something an hour late. I’m almost sure there is an end in sight.

Tomorrow we interview a nanny candidate. I hope it goes well, as she’s immediately available. We also discussed the nanny prospect with Anna, and she was surprisingly enthused about the idea. At least for the summer, it would mean she wouldn’t have to rush to get ready in the morning (dressing, eating, and brushing teeth and hair in less than two hours is considered rushing). I made the comparison to Eloise’s mostly companion, but in retrospect, I should probably avoid encouraging Anna to be any more Eloise-like than she already is.

This has been yet another “too busy to blog” week… so much going on and yet no time to write about it. Last night I was finally so exhausted that I went to bed before the kids did; Jennifer put them both to bed and I was out by 7:30pm.

Tara is now officially a toddler. Walking is her preferred means of getting around, but she still has the uncertain, could-fall-over-at-any-time stagger that is at once cute and hilarious. I have some more video to post at a later time.

I forgot to mention that a couple weeks back Jennifer upgraded her awful Sony DSC-T1 camera–which is really cool up until you try to use it, or look at the pictures it took–to a Canon A610. The Canon is bigger but faster, more usable, and it takes vastly better pictures. Pay attention, folks; more megapixels doesn’t mean better picture quality; but bigger sensors and optics do. You just can’t fight physics. The new camera should help her bring home some good pictures from Singapore when she goes at the end of April.

Anna has been something of a challenge lately. Yesterday, she got up on the wrong side of the bed and things went downhill from there. I was at home in the morning, preparing for a teleconference I was hosting, and outside my office door I could hear all sorts of raging going on. When I picked her up from school, she was moping in the corner. Her teacher hurried right up to me to warn me what a foul mood she was in. Apparently there was some incident at snack time that got her all upset, and though I don’t remember the details, it was yet another instance of Anna getting all sideways when the unexpected happens. She has much difficulty coping with the unexpected.

I am back on the Atkins diet again, as my weight has gotten out of control. I had a lot of success, losing over 50 lbs in 2001-2 on Atkins, staying stable for a couple years, and lately gaining a bunch back. I decided to take control and get back on the wagon before I give it all back. Having done it before, I’m confident I’ll be back down to a reasonable weight by July. I’m glad that Tara is eating normal people food (albeit cut into small pieces), because cooking for three different diets is hard enough.