I was home for a few days by myself after Christmas, when we went out to Nebraska to visit my parents and then she and Lego swung down to Denver to visit her family for a few days. It was kind of a weird experience, because I probably didn’t talk to another human being for two or three days, except when she called.

At least this time I’ll still have school and work to go to all week, so I won’t go completely crazy. It’s still unnerving how quiet it is around here. Lego is a very busy little boy, so even when everything else is quiet, he’s just about always making some kind of noise. But now all I hear is the hum of the fridge and the clack of my keyboard. Maybe I should put some music on. (Especially since now I’ve got that darn Celine Dion song in my head.)

Quitting my job was kind of strange. My last few employment experiences have been so unpleasant and ended so abruptly and painfully that this time came as quite a surprise. I never really loved this job, but it was certainly the best job I’d had since graduating. Of course, that sounds like it’s damning with faint praise, but I don’t mean it that way. I had three job offers at the same time, and I feel like I picked the right one. And even though the job could be pretty boring, working with Cicada again was a lot of fun.

It’s weird to think that I’m finally doing it. I’ve wanted to go to grad school for three years now, and I never thought it would happen because the timing was always wrong. But then I looked back and saw in retrospect that it would’ve worked out, except that I kept chickening out, and I realized that now was as good a time as any. Of course, maybe right now wasn’t the best time—I kind of wish I’d waited for fall semester just to reduce the level of stress in my life a little.

I don’t know where I’m going with all of this. I’ve got a lot on my mind, but I’m kind of exhausted, so this probably isn’t the most coherent post I’ve ever written. But on a final note, the title of this post is the title of a book I read several months ago, and it’s one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a while.

I didn’t think it was as funny as the reviews said, but that’s alright, because I don’t think it was really supposed to be the same kind of office spoof as The Office or Dilbert. It’s just about work and life and changes and why we hate our jobs even though we need them so badly, emotionally speaking. Anyway, as LeVar Burton always used to say on Reading Rainbow, “But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

Newborn Duplo

Brinestone and Duplo

Brinestone, Duplo, and Jon Boy

Lego and Duplo

She’d had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and she was dilated past 3 cm then. This morning she was past 4, so they said we were there to stay this time. Things moved along quite quickly this time all by themselves, whereas last time her water had broken but she wasn’t really progressing until they put her on pitocin.

They broke her water, and then things moved really quickly. About 20 minutes of pushing later, we had ourselves a little boy. The doctor remarked on how huge he looked—sure enough, he weighed in at a whopping 9 pounds 3 ounces. Don’t ask me how the two of us produced such a big baby.

The name we settled on is Daniel Porter, and he seems to be doing great. He’s pretty calm and alert—he’s hardly cried, and he likes to just look around at everything. Brinestone’s doing pretty well, but obviously she’s pretty exhausted and sore (she went without an epidural this time).

I’ll try to post pictures tomorrow.

I’m slowly adding new designs and expanding the selection of shirts. One of the first new ones is this one, and I’m inordinately proud of it. Now, I understand that nerdy grammar shirts are not for everyone, and I don’t want to pressure anyone into buying anything, but I will just say this: anyone who buys a shirt will have a special place in my heart forever.

I think if there were any way to stay in our apartment in Salt Lake City and still attend BYU, I would. The commute would probably make me want to kill myself after the first week, and that’s not even figuring gas prices into the equation. I just did the math, and that’d be at least $40 a week just in gas. Ugh.

So we’re moving down to Utah County, and this time we won’t be living in Provo. I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this decision. On the one hand, it’s really nice to live close enough to campus to bike or walk to class. On the other hand, apartments near campus are overpriced, especially if you want a place that has both a dishwasher and washer and dryer hookups. Also, we were both kind of sick of Provo by the time we moved away last time. It’s like an endless sea of student housing, and all the drivers are psychopaths.

We decided to look a little further from campus, and, as Brinestone has already said, we settled on a place in Spanish Fork (I’d make an obligatory Spanish Fark joke here, but I’ve never heard anyone say that for real; In fact, usually I hear locals simply call it Spanish). It’ll be a bit of a drive to campus (Google Maps says 20 minutes, but I’m going to plan on 25–30), but it’s a pretty big place for a decent price. We’ll be close enough to hang out with our friends Dan and Ashley a little more often. And it’ll feel more like a real grown-up house and not a cramped rabbit hutch of an apartment.

This will make my eighth move in seven years (if you count moving to different apartments in the same building when I was single)—even more for Brinestone if you count going home each summer. I just hope we’re able to stay in this place for two or three years.

Earlier today I tried to change my email address in my account profile, and now when I log in I receive the error message “The account could not be found, or the password does not match.” Neither my old email address nor my new one work.

Dear Jonathon,
I’d be happy to help you with that. Please provide the shop id, so I can take a closer look and provide you with assistance in logging in. I look forward to your response.

Crystal R.

My shop id is arrantpedantry. Thanks.

Dear Jonathon,

Rebekah B.

As I said in my first email, that is exactly what my problem is. My account had originally been associated with [old email address], and then I tried to change it to [new email address]. Now I get an error message that there is no account associated with either my old email address or the new one, so I cannot log in at all. Is there any way to fix this?

Dear Jonathon,

Brittany C.

I already provided my store ID. It’s arrantpedantry.

Dear Jonathon,
I’m sorry to hear you are having troubles logging into your account. I have sent an email to the email address associated with the account in question that contains a link to reset the password. Once you click on the link, you will be prompted to create a new password for your account. Please check all email addresses you think may be associated with your account.

Brittany C.

I still have not received the password reset email. I suspect that I mistyped my email address when I tried to change it in my account profile. If this is what happened, is there any way I can have the email address changed so that I can log in again?

Dear Jonathon,
We would be more than happy to reset your password. However, according to our records there is no account corresponding with this email address. The following is a link you can use if you would like to create a new CafePress.com account today.

Shandra G

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t explicit enough up front about what the suspected problem was, but come on! I tell them that I have an account and that it won’t let me log in because it doesn’t recognize my address anymore, and all they do is insist that there’s no account matching my email address. Well, duh! I like how they at least offered to help me register a new account, even though at this point all I want do is log in to my old one, close the store, and move it somewhere else. Maybe I’ll try calling them, but I’m not very optimistic about that.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to help anything. It hung on the grey screen (where it usually displays the Apple logo) while making loud clicking noises—the kind that are sometimes produced by broken hard drives. Eventually it displayed an icon of a file folder with a question mark on it.

I tried booting from the OS installation DVD, but it refused to reinstall the OS (probably because of the aforementioned suspected drive failure). It froze when I tried to do a disk repair. Strangely, the hardware diagnostic program said everything was okay. And now it won’t even let me boot from the disc anymore.

So I have no computer, and the IT guy (who admitted that he is not familiar with Macs) who was trying to help me yesterday is gone today. Luckily Cicada is also gone today, and she said I could use her computer. So here I am, trying to be productive and not worry about the possibility that I lost most of a week’s work.

Tell me again how Macs are so superior.

My other option, of course, is to learn two languages from the beginning. The problem is that I applied to begin the MA program summer term, but none of the linguistics classes I need are offered then. My plan was to take just a language class that term, but it appears that of all the options I’m interested in, French is probably the only one I can take—101, 102, and 201 are all offered summer term, but 101 is not offered for German, Russian, Hebrew, Welsh, or most anything else.

And that’s where I start to get this crazy idea about starting with German 102. Brinestone took two years of German in college and got pretty good, and she’s taught me some basic vocabulary and grammar. And I took a semester of Old English, so that gives me a bit of head start. And I worked through several Rosetta Stone exercises last night (hooray for free access through the county library!) and then read most of a chapter in Brinestone’s old textbook. I was surprised at how much I understood.

So, the question is, can I get through all the German 101 material in under three months just by studying on my own? Or should I give up on that idea, stick with French, and maybe study German some other time? I guess I’ve still got a few months to decide.

We’re not having an easier time of it the second time around. We seem to be having the exact sort of block described here. We’ve looked at baby name books and haven’t really found inspiration. We even checked out the Baby Name Wizard book, which offers suggestions based on names you like, and it hasn’t been that helpful, either. All it’s shown is that we’re pretty consistent in our tastes . . . and that there aren’t a lot of boys’ names that match our tastes.

It’s funny how some people freak out when they find out that you don’t have a name picked out months in advance. After all, we did end up with a couple choices in mind last time, and we picked one within a few minutes of his birth; I don’t think we’re really in danger of leaving the hospital with a blank birth certificate or any other travesty of that sort. Still, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy, and we are definitely going to wait until he’s born to make a final decision.