Home Alone

Just got home from work, maybe a half hour ago, and no one's here. Denise and the kids are at the Taylors' apparently doing some baking and likely playing a card game or whatnot. I hope they're enjoying visiting. . .however, for me, I hate coming to an empty home. I like having family to relax here with. Sure, I could just as easily head on over there now that I've showered and changed, but that's not the same. Some nights that'd be perfectly up my alley, but some nights I'd really rather not have to go anywhere else to relax with Denise and the kids after a tiring day at work. Whine, whine, whine. . .and other bits.

Right now I'm still finding it difficult to force myself to write something daily. My mind just hasn't been made to keep with the discipline for so long. While some of these posts feel superfluous and arbitrary to me, I have to remind myself that it's exercise to get me back into the swing of constant writing again. Mental weightlifting.

So, I'm trying to figure out how to set my digital camera up as a device to use for Google video chat and am currently sucking ass at that as well. I am technotarded. Any pointers?

What's Up?

At the moment I'm riding on a neighbour's wireless connection because something's wrong with mine and I can't figure it out... as this isn't secure, I won't be on for too long.

So, some of you have noted (here and in e-mail) that I somewhat off-handedly mentioned Denise being pregnant in my previous post. There hasn't been a more in-depth or formal announcement because there's a decent amount of stress involved with it right now. We're superstitious people and that calls for us not sharing pregnancy until after the first trimester is over. The friday prior to my last post was our first appointment with the midwife--expecting that we were then just 12 weeks along we were surprised to learn that Denise's last period was a fake one brought about by hormone fluctuations from the ending of her birth control pill usage and that she, at the time, was actually a full 4 or 5 weeks further along than we expected. This is stressful because that means that the baby was exposed to New Year's Eve celebrations and a full month of meds prescribed for her rheumatoid arthritis that happen to not be ideal for babies. In the next two weeks we'll be having various tests to check on the baby and make sure the stress is needless (as our midwife suspects, but still we worry). As I write this, Denise is half-way through the pregnancy and the baby's due in early October. More information, as we deem it appropriate to share, coming later. I'm in waiting and hoping mode for this.

This past Friday was my foreign language proficiency exam. It's a requirement for all students in the Master's program at Chico State's English Department. I could go a long way to explaining why you have to master foreign languages as an English major, but that'll be another day. I wasn't able to test in the language I've been working the past few years (Portuguese) due to time constraints/grader availabilities so I had to test in my next-best language: German. It's only been ten years since I last studied the language. I think I did ok, then I read the most recent published statistics on the exam--52% of exam takers fail this exam the first time through, and 76% of those fail the second try (which is also the final try), so I'm in waiting and hoping mode for that too.

No improvement on the vehicle front; no new news on the trial front. The kids are all doing splendidly and I'm one stressed-out mofo.

Evs.