Mary progress (by alaric)

Mary's doing well. Her blood sugar was a bit low at first, due to some combination of medication Sarah was on before the birth (Metformin, to control gestational diabetes, which acts to reduce blood sugar levels) and a delay in Sarah's breast milk coming through properly, but she got over that fine and was pronounced fit to discharge. She and Sarah are still in the hospital for now, though, as Sarah's quite anemic and gets short of breath very quickly, and she was showing some signs of infection; but they put her on antibiotics, and the infection symptoms are fading away. She's on iron supplements, and is getting stronger every day.

I've been spending most of every day with them, helping Sarah with looking after herself and Mary, and keeping them company. I get to hold Mary lots, which has been particularly fun as she's started being more awake and alert; she spent a lot of time sleeping for the first couple of days, but now she opens her eyes and looks around, turning her head towards voices. Today she took to lifting her head up, although her neck is still quite weak so she can only do this if you're holding her upright to begin with; she now unsteadily holds her head up so she can look around more. The right thing to do to help her brain develop at this stage is to talk to her, so that's what I've been doing... telling her about the pets at home and that sort of thing. I've also been having a go at talking to her in Lojban, as I'd quite like to raise her as Lojban/English bilingual, in order to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis once and for all. I need to to a bit more research on suitable Lojban baby talk, but so far it's been {ko .iu gleki} ("be happy, darling"), {lo vi mamta be do} ("Mummy's here!"), {mi patfu do .iu} ("It's Daddy!"), {.uu .uinaidai} ("Aw, you're sad"), {.uipei} ("Are you happy?"), {.uidai} ("You're happy!"), {fi'i la meris} ("Welcome, Mary"), and so on.

Motivation (by alaric)

When I started working, long ago in 1998 at Internet Vision, motivation wasn't a problem: work was something I did to cheer myself up. This held when I moved over to Frontwire; but when the company abandoned its offices, sacked all of my department apart from me, and I had to work from home back in 2002 or 2003 or so (IIRC), I started to find it hard to get up and start working in the mornings; I realised that working on problems with other people was more of a motivation for me than the fear of being reprimanded for not getting enough work done!

Well, I left that company before long, and freelanced for a while, then got together with some others and formed a company, GenieDB. I can now combine the best of both worlds; I can work from home, in my own environment, while being in contact with my colleagues in our company IRC channel, and working together on problems. I find it hardest when we're all working on unrelated projects, so there's little daily sharing of issues and triumphs, but the level of de-motivation I feel then is small fry compared to how it was when I worked alone!

Nonetheless, since my Frontwire days, various other stresses have appeared in my life, so my base level of motivation is nowhere near what it once was. Carefully managing my morale in order to keep my head above water is an important concern.

Luckily, I made a breakthrough some months ago; for some reason or other I had to be up much earlier than usual, so was up at 8am one day. When I had dealt with the business that required the early morning, it was about 9am, and I didn't need to start work until 10am - so I used the extra hour to go and tinker with stuff in my workshop. It was good. Having had an early morning I was tired that night and fell asleep easily, and having had an hour of "me time", I didn't have my usual restless urge to go and do something fun rather than going to bed.

And I forgot to turn the alarm clock back to its usual time. So the next morning I awoke again at 8am. Except this time, having been to sleep earlier, I wasn't dog tired. So I got up and enjoyed two hours of me-time before starting work.

I was hooked.

Previously, I would wake up knowing I had to get out of bed, get Jean ready for preschool, deliver her there, then start working, spend my lunch break mowing the lawn or other domestic tasks, eat at my desk, work until it was time to go and collect Jean, bring her back, cook dinner, take Jean to bed, then try and catch up on domestic matters (while tired) before going to bed and having trouble sleeping. This not being a particularly delightful prospect, I would often lie in bed far too long, cherishing the ability to just lie there and think, knowing that getting up meant stepping onto a virtual treadmill.

But now I was waking up at eight in the morning, and positively leaping out of bed at the thought of going and doing something fun. I made a rule that, from 8am to 10am, I'd do whatever I wanted; I wouldn't accept requests. I'd get to my desk at 10am, lively and happy. I'd be more tired in the evenings (that extra two hours didn't come out of nowhere), but much less depressed, so I'd get the domestic stuff done sooner and end up spending more time with Sarah once Jean was in bed, then be off to bed in good time as I was getting tired.

My two hours in the morning even gave me time to do things like having showers, which I had previously had to try and fit elsewhere in the day, often ending up going several days overdue!

Even when I'm in London, I woke up at 8am and spent two hours pottering about on my laptop, or going for a walk.

Now that Jean's started school, it's not quite so good - I have to be up at 7:30am to start helping Sarah to get her up, and fed, and dressed, and leave the house at 8:15am to get Jean to the school for 8:45am, but then I'm back home at 9am for an hour of my own before starting work at 10am; I still find it hard to get out of bed knowing I have to do the school run before I can do fun things, and I don't fancy getting out of bed at 6:30am for an hour to myself before doing that 🙂 When Sarah's healthier she might be able to cope with the school run on her own, though, so it might improve yet; she doesn't seem to benefit from starting the day with her own time as much as I do, so that might be a fair trade.

We'll see!

Lovely Date 03/06/09 (by sarah)

Need I say more?

Walks off humming happily.

First Class (by alaric)

Once a week, I go to London for a few days, almost always by train. It costs £42 if I buy a ticket from the station on the day - or, if I book in advance at TheTrainLine, as little as £16. Tickets ordered in advance are cheaper, but it seems there is a limited allocation of each price grade - as the more popular routes quickly sell out of £8 each way tickets, then the next level up (£11.50), then the next level up (£18).

However, when I booked the tickets for last week, for the return journey on Saturday, only the £18 ones remained - but, unusually, there were still some £19.50 first class tickets left.

I'd never travelled first class before. So, I decided I'd give it a try. £1.50 isn't much to spend on an experiment.

And my conclusion is: first class equals a comfier seat and the offer of a free biscuit and tea or coffee.

Which, if I drank hot drinks, would definitely be worth the extra one fifty, at the going rate for such things.

As a non-hot-drinker, I think I about broke even with my experiment, but on a journey of more than an hour, the better seat would be well worth a similarly small price increase.

But travelling first class is nowhere near worth the more than doubling in price (£116 rather than £42) it costs if you buy your ticket on the day. That's a total ripoff.

Race For Life (by sarah)

As many of you know there is an event called Race For Life which is designed to raise money to 'beat' cancer and our friend is going to be running and is looking for sponsorship!

You can sponsor her here.

It's quiet a run anyway - the sort of length you really need to train for plus she is offering to crochet thankyous for people which is an excellent idea!

Cancer touches so many of our lives and in developed countries is a big killer - my first contact with cancer was my granddad who had asbestocise which led to mesophilioma (have no idea how to spell either of those but basically the fibroids fromthe asbestosis cuased cancer), he died shortly after I returned from Kenya and in fact my perants weren't even there to pick me up as they were at the hospice.

By this point my friend Amber was also sick with luekemia a cancer of the blood. She went in and out of remission and had various things happen to her like a stroke due to the treatments and stuff - she dies whilst I was in Kin Lochleven in Scoutland during a field trip. I missed her funeral for which I am still sad - she actually died of pnumonia and was in remission but was just too weak from all the treatments.

Her illness was found as she came with me to give blood on my 18th birthday and she phoned me on my 21st though was too tired to come to the party - a year younger than me she died not long before her own 21st birthday - she was one of the nicest and most intelligent people I knew and asked me about Imperial lots.

More recently there is mum's breast cancer so obviously I feel very strongly about events like this - hence the hair dyeing and things in the autum.

So please if you can sponsor 🙂

And I hope this wasn't too morbid.