The Wisconsin Martins

I woke up around 6:30a and actually spent most of my time getting ready for work. Thursdays are also Christine’s day to work at the pharmacy. I take Esther over to a babysitter on my own way to work. Today, some friends from Oregon were going to watch her. I was ready to leave for work by 8:30a but Esther decided to take a nice, long morning nap. She finally woke up around 9:00a. I dropped her off at the sitter’s, and made it into the office by 9:35a.

I had a general blizzard of issues come at me as soon as I checked my e-mail. I ended up re-prioritizing my to-do list. There’s no way I was going to get to everything originally scheduled for “This Week”. Life granted me a bit of reprieve, when my trainer e-mailed to say that class wouldn’t start until 1:30p (instead of the original 1:00p).

Class went well this afternoon. We had to create some hierarchical rules for routing lab results to the people. The system will use the first — and only the first — matching rule that it finds. It’s very important that the rules are ordered from most specific to least specific. If not, some people might never get the results that they were expecting to get. The practice exercises for that section were a bit challenging. But the rest of the day was pretty easy to compensate.

I started for Oregon at 5:00p, to retrieve Esther from the sitter’s. I stopped at home first to drop off my work gear and print out directions to Babe’s. I had Esther picked up and loaded up by 5:50p. We ran into a spot of traffic driving to Babe’s, so we didn’t arrive until 6:20p. I drove past the parking lot to find that early arrivals had packed it beyond full. They had also filled up the surrounding parking lots and side streets. I found a mostly empty lot attached to a corporate park about 2 blocks away. Esther and I walked back to the bar, after bundling up against the cold.

Mike and Alicia had arrived early, but not early enough to get a table. They signed the waiting list for a table, but that ultimately proved fruitless. The bar was standing room only. People were packed in every nook and cranny of the building. The wait staff had a constant struggle just to carry food and drinks through the facility. Because there was nowhere to sit, I had to hold Esther and place her diaper bag between my feet.

Christine arrived around 7:00p. She was pretty hungry after a full day at work. Rather than having her and Esther stay, hoping to get food, I sent them home. It turned out to be a good decision: I didn’t get any food until after 9:30p.

I spent the next 2.5 hours standing. I also spent the next 2.5 hours watching the Packers - Cowboys game, so it wasn’t all bad. As expected, it was a bit of a dogfight. Injuries proved to be decisive. The Packers were without their starting right corner (Charles Woodson), backup right corner (Aaron Rouse), and pass-rushing defensive end (Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila). That allowed the Cowboys’ receivers to catch more passes and prevent the Packers from putting a lot of pressure on Tony Romo.

To cap things off, Brett Favre was injured midway through the second quarter and never returned to the game. Backup quarterback Aaron Rodgers entered the game for the first real playing time of his three-year career. One could almost hear the crowd deflate as they watched Rodgers come onto the field. The Packers were already trailing by 10 points and things did not seem to be looking up. Rodgers quickly showed, however, that he’s been putting his limited practice time to good use. He was able to complete passes, find open receivers, run for first downs, and generally do a pretty good job of leading the offensive. He finished the night having passed 18/26 for 201 yards and a touchdown. Not bad at all! (And better, it should be noted, than Brett Favre’s 5/14 for 56 yards and two interceptions.)

Ultimately, it was a losing effort. Even Rodger’s heroics couldn’t overcome the hole that the Packers put themselves into through injuries and stupid penalties. The final score was 37-27, Dallas. The Packers are now 10-2.

I stayed at Babe’s until the bitter end, then sprinted for the warmth of my car. I finally came home for good at 11:00p and was in bed by 11:30p. No late night reading for me! Just some short conversation with Christine before turning out the lights.

I woke up and around 6:30am, grabbed my Bible, and finished reading through the book of Ezekiel. I was enjoying the book right up until the point where it delved into the minutia of how to construct a new temple. I think I see hints of what the future will be when Jesus is present in the temple, but I have a hard time really focusing on those passages.

I also spent a chunk of time using Bookpedia to organize our library. I went through and identified which books were mine, which were Christine’s, which we both claimed, and which are Esther’s. Eventually, I’ll update my LibraryThing profile with my collection and probably my iRead profile on Facebook as well. At the moment, my profiles have a mix of my books and Christine’s books. They’re also out of date.

Arrived at work around 9:45a and had my usually eventful morning. I was in class again this afternoon. I didn’t leave work until 6pm. On the way home from work, I listened to a discussion about Peak Oil and whether or not we’ll ever run out of oil. This really caught my attention:

Light sweet crude (less than 1% sulfur), running out, but plenty of sour crude: easier to make gasoline out of light sweet crude, but easy enough to make diesel fuel and other things out of sour crude. “We have never and will never run out of anything.” As prices go up, people find more ways to find more of it; and as prices go up people find more ways to do without it. Alternative fuels will become more economical, we will switch to them, and never run out of oil.

We had dinner as soon as I get home (chicken enchiladas! mmmmm), then left for Life Group. Tonight we discussed whether or not “Sex is Dirty”. (It’s not.)

Home by 9pm. Changed Esther and put her straight to bed. She’d tired herself out during the day, so she fell asleep with no arguments. I read through my news feeds while Christine arranged a substitute babysitter for tomorrow (Liz and Joshua are sick, so they can’t watch her like normal). Now we’re watching a Cosby Show episode, then off to bed.

I woke up around 5am and wasn’t able to fall back asleep. I got out of bed, read some news feeds, confirmed that my fantasy football team clinched a playoff spot, and finished writing yesterday’s journal entry. I checked my computer and noticed that my photo backup hadn’t been running for the past month. I fixed my backup script, then kicked it off. It spent over an hour backing up our latest photos to Joyent Strongspace.

While eating breakfast, I started reading The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher (now that I’m done reading Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan). I quickly realized one thing: I’m familiar with the concept of the British parliamentary system, but I’m completely lost on the details. The book is very interesting, but also very confusing.

I finally managed to put it down and leave for the office. After a quick stop to pick up some contacts for my wife, I got into the office at 9:30am. The morning was busy but not overwhelmingly so. I spent the afternoon in class once again, but was able to leave by 5pm.

Five minutes after I walked in the door, the entire family walked back out the door. We went down the street for dinner at BrouxNellie’s. I had the chicken finger club sandwich, Christine had a burger, and Esther turned her nose up at some delicious macaroni & cheese soup. Esther spent most of her time twisting every which way in her high chair to check out the other diners.

Christine dropped us off at home while she went out with some of the other mothers from church. I read while Esther played on the floor for about half an hour. (I also played on the floor with her, some.) Eventually she crawled over to me and looked like she was ready for bed. I changed her diaper, put her pajamas on and had her in bed by 7:40pm.

Five minutes later, she let me know that she was ready to get up again. Once she got up, she drank some water then played some more. After she pooped her diaper, she again crawled over to me and acted like she wanted to go to bed. I again changed her and put her to bed. She whimpered in the crib for about 15 minutes, so I got her up, rocked her a bit, and put her back to bed. This time she only whimpered for about 5 minutes before (apparently) deciding to fall alseep. Time alseep: 8:35pm.

I’ve been reading reviews of Amazon’s new eBook reader, the Kindle. I’m interested in the idea of an eBook reader (it beats the huge hardcover books I’m normally carrying around) and I like the new e-ink displays that are almost like reading off of a printed page. On the other hand, the Kindle costs $400. Odds are, Christine and I would both want to read it at the same time. That’s either one expensive gadget to fight over or one super-expensive buy for each of us. Still, I read a hands on review tonight that makes it sound worthwhile. And Neil Gaiman likes it.

A quick check of Amazon’s Kindle book store reveals that I couldn’t get any of the books that I’m currently reading — The Downing Street Years, Dutch: A Memoir, or Overcoming Sin and Temptation — in Kindle format. On the other hand, I could read G. K. Chesterton’s classic Orthodoxy for only $0.99. I could also get the text on the internet for free and load it onto the Kindle manually. While a Kindle might not, yet, be great for reading older, copyrighted books, it would be fantastic for reading classic public-domain books.

I’ll keep it in mind for Christmas money.

I spent the evening reading The Downing Street Years. I was too tired from waking up early to do much else. Christine came home around 10:15p and we went to bed shortly afterwards.

Surprisingly, Esther let us sleep in until 7am this morning. I read through some news feeds, filed a few receipts, ate breakfast, and didn’t manage to get into work until around 10am.

While eating breakfast, I finished the final pages of Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. It’s an interesting book. As the Amazon review says:

Why did Pulitzer-winning Theodore Roosevelt biographer Edmund Morris controversially choose to write his authorized biography of Ronald Reagan in the form of a historical novel? There’s a clue in a quote the book attributes to Jane Wyman, Reagan’s first wife. As Ronnie speechified about the Red Menace at a 1940s Hollywood party, Wyman allegedly whispered to a friend, “I’m so bored with him, I’ll either kill him or kill myself.” This anecdote, if true, is more revealing than Nancy Reagan’s charge in the book that Jane had attempted suicide to get Ronnie to marry her in the first place. Jane was no intellectual—Morris cracks that “If Jane had ever heard of Finland, she probably thought it was an aquarium”—but he found to his horror, after years of research, that he felt much the same as Wyman. Reagan was as boring as a box of rocks, as elusive as a ghost.

Decades before Alzheimer’s clouded Reagan’s mind, he showed a terrifying lack of human presence. “I was real proud when Dad came to my high school commencement,” reports his son, Michael Reagan. After posing for photos with Michael and his classmates, the future president came up to him, looked right in his eyes, and said, “Hi, my name’s Ronald Reagan. What’s yours?” Poor Michael replied, “Dad, it’s me. Your son. Mike.”

Despite deep research and unprecedented access—no previous biography has ever been authorized by a sitting president—Morris could get no closer to Reagan’s elusive soul than Reagan’s own kids could. So Morris decided to dramatize Reagan’s life with several invented characters—including a fictionalized version of himself and an imaginary gossip columnist who makes wicked comments on Reagan’s career. This is one weird tactic, forcing the reader constantly to consult the footnotes at the back of the book to sort things out, and Morris makes it tougher by presenting his invented characters as real, even in the footnotes.

Ultimately, the hubbub over Morris’s odd method is beside the point. His speculative entry into Reagan’s life and mind is plausible, dramatic, literary, and lit by dazzling flashes of insight. The narrator watches the young Reagan as a lifeguard (years before the real Morris was born):

One tunnels along in a shroud of silvery bubbles, insulated from any sight or sound…. Others may swim alongside for a while, but their individuality tends to refract away, through the bubbles and the blur. Often I have marveled at Reagan’s cool, unhurried progress through crises of politics and personnel, and thought to myself, He sees the world as a swimmer sees it.

We cannot verify Morris’s notion that Reagan probably approved the illegal Iran-Contra funding without having a clue it was illegal, or that the “Star Wars” program sprang from his love of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s first novel, A Princess of Mars, which featured glass-domed cities. But however bizarre and ignorant his thoughts were, however cold his heart, Morris believes, the guy did crush the Evil Empire and achieve greatness. Morris achieves a kind of greatness, too, but one wishes he had written a more straightforward dramatization of history. —Tim Appelo

I have a far more complete view of Ronald Reagan now than I ever did before.

I spent the afternoon in EpicCare training and learned just how complex our Medications master file can be. The more I learn about healthcare complexity, the more surprised I am that the healthcare system works at all.

I came home around 6pm and had fun playing with Esther before dinner. She sat in her booster seat and ate roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn with us. After dinner I finished catching up on my feed reading. I chatted briefly with Nate and a little more extensively with Hallie. I also decided to put my Wall Street Journal subscription to good use. I subscribed to a bunch of their news feeds. I’ll spend the next several weeks deciding which subscriptions are worthwhile and which subscriptions I don’t really need to keep.

I made plans to watch Thursday night’s Packers’ game with Mike and Alicia. The 10-1 Packers will be having a showdown with the 10-1 Cowboys, in Dallas. Unfortunately, the game will only be televised on the NFL Network. (Thank-you very much, NFL.) We’ll be meeting at Babe’s around 6:30pm, to eat dinner and watch the game.

Esther went to bed around 8pm. We celebrated by watching Stargate SG-1, episode 10x16 - Bad Guys. It was definitely funny, quite possibly one of our new favorite episodes.

We finished out the night by reading in bed. I continued Reading the Classics by reading through chapter 2 of Overcoming Sin and Temptation. First I did a re-read of chapter 1, highlighting as I went through. Then I read through and highlighted chapter 1.

This is the first time I’ve ever highlighted one of my books — textbooks included. I was driven to it by John Owen’s complex writing style. Highlighting allows me to actually focus in on the key ideas and mark them for later review.

Asleep by 11pm.