No year end retrospective, nor year forward prognostications. Merely thanks for a good year. I've been blessed with health, happiness, a wonderful child, wife, family, food in my belly, roof over my head. Life is good. Worked a lot this week. Almost overnight Monday to get something done. Otherwise, it was nice and quiet most of the time. Crumbs opened up, and I feel sorry for The Cupcake Counter down the street. Strange to have 2 cupcake bakeries, in the Loop, pretty much across the street (Franklin) on Madison. But got a mini sampler pack from Crumbs, and I gotta admit, they were good. Actually reminded me of the old Cupcakes place down on Barry, when I got introduced to the whole cupcake craze. Saw brothers-in-law Tuesday night, picked up Del Seoul on the way over to Mike's. Been surprised that Lucy's sleeping as well as she is with her schedule all over the place. Went out to the Argaos today for dinner, but had to come back in since Tracy's working tomorrow. Oh, I've also returned to Redbox. Figured out that Netflix isn't cheaper. I only get about 6 DVDs a month through Netflix, which doesn't quite make up the $1/dvd through Redbox. Watch Instantly could be worth the extra $4, but not sure. Netflix is good for catalog titles, while Redbox is great for new releases. So I'll do both for a while, until I run out of old movies to get from Netflix, which, if I did the math correctly, will be in 2 years with the current size of my queue.

Like this blog, just a couple days late. So Thursday left work early at 3pm, and even then was the 2nd to last person out the door. Picked up the only Christmas I bought this year, a mini Keurig for my mom, and then home. Friday I had off but Tracy was working so daddy day care in the morning, then over to the grandparents for Christmas Eve. Made it out for mass at 4:30pm, and Lucy, without an afternoon nap, made it through without a peep. My mom took care of her, so maybe that had something to do with it. But ended up a late night for Lucy, didn't get home and in bed until almost 9pm. Saturday went out the Argaos for Christmas day and the usual party. That night, with a 2 1/2 year old, 8 month old, 4 month old, and 2 week old in the house, meant not a lot of sleep for the brothers and sister. Lucy didn't really sleep at all, and we ended up putting her to bed with us to get some rest. Sunday we managed to make it out to the mall for some discounts, but I didn't end up getting anything. Wanted to get a sweazer, a sweatshirt blazer like Gabe had, but they didn't have any at Banana Republic. Back to work this week, and Lucy's back to sleeping like a champ in her own crib. She's also razzing and crawling. So a pretty good Christmas overall.

Bedtime last night? 1:25am. Alarm clock? 6am. Awesome. Just 1 day into it, already falling off the horse. Made a Home Depot run last night after putting Lucy to bed to get lightbulbs for the condo building. Good thing I got the box of dozen contractor special, since I changed 8 bulbs last night. Crazy. 8. Seriously? 8. And since I was out, I dropped by Binny's. I love that place. Passed on getting a bottle of Absinthe, because while it would look cool and make me feel cool for having it, much like the bottle of Chartreuse I have. I did get a nifty looking cucumber liquor and a bottle of creme de cacao, which was the reason I went, because, for some reason, I wanted a Brandy Alexander. Go figure. Finally bought Angry Birds. I'm late to the party there, but glad I finally joined in. That's a fun game. One of the reasons I stayed up late last night.

9pm is the start of my bedtime process. To prevent myself from ending up on the couch, and too tired or too lazy to get to bed. Of course, while I'm in the office, this only leaves me with 2-3 hours of home time and/or downtime. Not a whole lot. For that matter, not a whole lot of time with the girls either. Lucy took a couple crawls last night. I was sitting and reading the new Tagalog first words book, Tracy was sitting nearby, and all of a sudden, Lucy went from there to over here in no time flat. Then she fell over and wonder why her parents were so happy. Of course, after that she went back to belly flopping and army crawling and carpet swimming. She survived yet another weekend of daddy day care. I need to learn how to multitask with the baby. I do nothing but hang out with her when I'm watching her. Saw Bryan King and a bunch more people over the weekend that I hadn't seen in a long time. At dinner Friday night at Rocks Lakeview it felt like 2003. Crazy. Also, Bryan's brother, David Robert King is really good. I enjoyed his set at uncommon ground on Sunday much more than Goose Island Wrigleyville Friday night. I especially liked the protest song tribute song. Almost wanted to start singing along. Hard to believe Christmas is right around the corner.

I stay up too late, end up sleeping on the couch, putting off doing the dishes and washing up for bed until 2am. Sometimes I even end up sleeping there. So strange. I blame it on coming into the office instead of working from home. In Lucy news, she's shrieking. So vocal, but no words. No constants. But happy shrieking, crying. Reaching and rolling, but not yet crawling. And a smile that lights up the room. Melts my heart. Went to the Duke on Sunday night with Russell. Even though I live within walking distance, I only really went with him, and now that he's leaving, not sure when I'll ever go back. Monday had the day off for daddy day care. Then back to work. I gotta admit some of this sysadmin stuff can be fun, making things work, and making things right. Kind of nice. More immediate payback as apposed to projects and long term development. Downloaded a bunch of EA Games apps for iOS since they're on sale for 99¢. Also trying out Google Latitude since they finally released an official iPhone app with background updating. Works, almost, but I occasionally end up in Chinatown, probably because I get the signal from there when I'm up on the 25th floor in the office. Watched a couple episodes of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and Firefly, and makes me miss those shows even more. They're just so good. Going to see David Robert King at Goose Island Wrigleyville tonight and maybe at Uncommon Ground on Sunday. And on daddy care care for the weekend.

Trying something different out.  Typing this out in Notes.app on the iPad, instead of in a browser window.  Just trying to write it all down. Over a week between updates this time. Whoops. Last weekend was three straight days of daddy day care.  I took Monday off, and Tracy worked the weekend.  Got a new nephew, Caden, born to Mike and Amy Tuesday night. Didn't get a chance to see them in the hospital but dropped by today with some food and Lucy. Christmas at the Argaos is definitely going to be a full house. Crazy full. Got our first real Christmas tree, a tiny one, only a couple feet tall. Kinda nice to have, but we really don't have much in the way of holiday decorations. Otherwise, still crazy busy at work. Oh, plowed through the first couple of seasons of Blue Mountain State on Netflix. Like Varsity Blues goes to college. Pretty funny. But the first season was way better than the second. 

Tempted to stop trying to keep daily entries as well on the Memex. There's definite holes there. prn.eric.abando.com does a pretty good job filling in activities, but doesn't track what I'm eating. Wish there was some web service that did that. Something simple, just allow me to input foods, and have an rss feed or an API that allows me to pull the data out. Be great if there was an iPhone/iPad app to go along with it as well. Oh well. Speaking of iOS devices, with the new 4.2.1 update, I tried turning off Auto Capitalize, Auto Correct with spelling, and lasted a week before turning them all back on. Too used to the assistance I guess. Also, using the iPad a lot more in landscape lately. Finally updated a bunch of photos to Lucy's website. Was about a month since the last photo. My parents are in the Philippines for JP's wedding so Tracy's parents are watching Lucy for half the week, and Tracy and I covering the other two days. Forgot to mention we went to The Publican the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Only had one meat dish, and it was actually probably the one that put us over (I'm not counting the pork rinds as a meat dish). So good though. Yummy. Lucy had her 6 month checkup when she was 7 months old. All good there. Had a day off to watch Lucy on Tuesday, worked from home on Wednesday, first time in a while for that. I miss my chair. And it's winter now.