Babies are a precious treasure

One must study and prepare carefully for their arrival...


Play with them...


Nurture them...


And treat them with the dignity and respect that one would give to any other human being.

Kobuta is a Facebook Status Update

Today
Kobuta is rolling rolling rolling. 12:13am

Yesterday
Kobuta is samui. 1:29pm

October 22
Kobuta is an aunt and can't get enough of her chubby new nephew. 11:36pm

October 20
Kobuta is being deluged with family. 9:43pm

October 19
Kobuta is experiencing movie sign! 6:19pm

October 16
Kobuta is sleeping. 2:55am

October 12
Kobuta is Kingston bound. 3:13pm

October 10
Kobuta is in need of good birthday present ideas. 11:38pm

October 8
Kobuta is rewriting her resume but it's coming out in Engrish. 3:22pm

October 4
Kobuta is still so hungry. 6:14pm
Kobuta is so hungry. 1:26pm

October 1
Kobuta is missing her cellphone oops. 4:15pm

September 30
Kobuta is disappointed by HP7. 6:28pm

September 28
Kobuta is taking off the kid gloves and putting on the Very Angry Gloves. 9:00pm
Kobuta is redesigning. 5:33pm
Kobuta is full of despair! 1:10am

September 26
Kobuta is feeling trigger happy. 8:16pm

Hey baby!

Dear Ethan Malcolm Yao Zhi (崔堯智),

Welcome to this crazy place. I love your name. Congratulations to your momma and papa, you sure tired them out, all 8 pounds, 4 ounces of you.

Regards,
The World

---

Many hours of labour for poor KT, but she's a tough cookie and Stubborn Ethan popped out at about 2.30pm. Ming worked hard too, playing Halo and calling family and friends with updates. Ethan (or Tsui BB) is a Pig, just like me. But he's special because he's a Golden Pig (shiny!); according to the Chinese Zodiac, it's an especially auspicious year to be born. Go baby go! I'm looking forward to seeing him grow and play and learn and gik his daddy (and only his daddy) in return for some of HM's more difficult childhood moments (threatening to run into someone's house with a car, sitting on a cactus, etc).

Welcome Baby Ethan! We love you.

Attention!

Baby Alert has been raised to Defcon 4. All troops prepare for raid on soon-to-be-parental units.

Since everyone else is doing it...

How about a list of faults too...pig-headed, passive-aggressive, neurotic and indecisive. Welcome Thalius, Ross Geller of the Daemon world.

I remember plowing through the Dark Materials trilogy when I was at Herstmonceux in 2005, but I read the books so quickly that I didn't remember the details very well. And then I heard about The Golden Compass movie, and thought 'Sounds interesting...reminds me of that book with the polar bear.' A quick Google search and voila, they're one and the same. Dur Liane, dur...

Lunch tomorrow with Gen and Jen and Tiff (yay!) at the Beer Bistro, and then the baby shower for Ming and Katie! A day of getting smashed and then reveling in pink and blue glory (and by glory I mean crepe paper).

Dammit my parachute won't open

In order to stop my mother's persistent nagging, I tried reading that book in high school, but having had the attention span of a goldfish, I didn't even come close to finishing it. Cue quarter life crisis.

So I'm thinking of applying to grad school but I also have to consider what to do beyond that. So I did some poking around online, looking at various jobs in journalism, publishing, teaching, etc. but it freaked me out too much and I had to stop. Everyone tells me to do what I love, but that's a whole lot, often contradictory, and not always practical in terms of a career. Some things that I like...

reading
people watching
busywork
making coffee
reasonable grammar
blogging sometimes
eating
traveling (see above: eating)
good music
so-called quirky humour
cleaning, sometimes
learning new things
movies
making stuff
making stuff work
making stuff look nice
HTML...ing
seeing the product of my work
a job well done

So what should I do? (Skills in all of the above will vary.) Right now I'm leaning towards a journalism or communications & culture program at Ryerson, but I have to decide if I even want to go to grad school. Also, need to determine how to fund two years of school. And what school to apply to. And when to start. And what to do in the meantime before school starts.

Gah! Have had way too much time to think about this. Someone distract me please.

How about that Usagi, eh

So my ex-employer (that paragon of corporate virtue, Nova) is in the hole. Instructor and staff pay alike were late last month. Heard rumors ranging from mass walkouts by branch managers/bigwig staff, to closing down the Canadian and Australian recruitment offices, to the forced and sudden eviction of Nova teachers from their apartments (subleased by Nova). Guess I got out at a good time. But that manic pink rabbit still owes me money for August and I have friends still working there, so needless to say, I'm worried about the whole situation.



But nevermind that. It's gorgeous in Toronto, 24 C and sunny all week. Farewell humid, beta-beta Kumamoto summer! I wish I had left a little later, so that I could be there for fall and winter again.

I've gone up

HumanForSale.com - I am for sale!

I'm back

And I have a lot of stories to tell. Hopefully I'll remember the details of everything from Japan. Expect updates in the future (finally).

Not up to anything right now, just catching up with friends and eating a lot. Gonna start job-searching soon or possibly apply to grad school, but nothing definite yet.