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Home again, home again... (new baby edition)
As a friend noted the other day, it’s a bit of a weird feeling to know that you’re driving only two to the hospital, but when you come home there will be three. But it’s a great feeling, too, to finally leave the hospital and bring folks home. Becky and Katie were discharged on Sunday morning and came home to two excited sisters and two grandparents.
Since she came home there has been a steady stream of visitors: my brother Aaron and his wife Emily came down on Sunday for a few hours, my parents came down to visit today for the day, and my sister Rebecca and her roommate came down this afternoon and will head back tomorrow. Such excitement for such a small person! :-)
Katie was awake and hungry a good bit of the night last night and has then managed to sleep a good bit of the day today. Hopefully we can get her schedule switched around this week so we can get some better sleep… or, I should say, so Becky can get some better sleep; I’m afraid I slept through most all of it last night.
Such a blessing to have a home with a beautiful wife and three beautiful little girls. God is good.
It's a girl!
Katherine (Katie) Paige Hubbs born March 20, 2009 at 11:22 am 7 lbs, 13.5 oz 20.5" long.
Everybody is doing great.
Who says you have to spend a lot?
Back in college, Dr. Batts suggested a cheap date: a trip to Walmart. His rationale? First, go through the food side of the store and eat the free samples, then, go back to the electronics department and watch whatever movie is playing on the TVs.
Well, 10 years ago I guess they still did have food samples and movies on the TVs at Walmart; now the samples are gone and the TVs run perpetual advertising. But last night we still managed a pretty fantastic cheap date.
Dinner for two + dessert + tip at a nice Italian restaurant: $1 after gift card. Mario Kart on the Wii at Best Buy: free. Mocha and Decaf Sumatra at Brewed Awakenings: free thanks to a credit on my account.
Three hours out with Becky on a beautiful March evening: priceless.
(Of course, a couple more experiences with Mario Kart on a Wii will pretty much convince me that we need to buy one… which has the potential make the total financial impact of the evening a little bit more expensive.)
The Waiting Game
We’ve gotten to that point in Becky’s pregnancy now where it’s just a waiting game. The calendar is clear; the in-laws are here (and planning to stay until after the baby is born), the bags are packed. Heck, we even made a trial run to the hospital on Thursday morning when we had a bit of a false alarm. So now we wait.
Last time when we were playing the waiting game we ended up buying a minivan. We’re still paying it off. I don’t think we’ll do anything quite so expensive this time, but we might at least take advantage of the free babysitting and go out to dinner or watch a movie or something. The weather is great this week so we’ll take lots of walks. And then we wait some more.
Actually, if the baby were born on Wednesday or so of this week the timing would be pretty great - nothing like having a built-in excuse to take vacation days from work during the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament. :-) Not that basketball would be my, um, priority or anything.
I am slowly learning patience whether I like it or not.
A dilemma of sorts
Last week I accepted a position in a new group here at work. It’s a group I’ve worked with for several years, and I knew I wanted to work in that group if the opportunity arose. The opportunity did arise, and I got the position. While the exact transfer date has yet to be settled upon (sometime today we’ll get it figured out, I hope), it’s just a matter of time.
Which leads me to this dilemma. I have two options for my new office. (I’m not quite senior enough to get my own full-sized office yet… one more engineering grade to go.)
Choice 1: share a two-person office with a co-worker, getting the end of the office near the door. One desk, one table, file drawer.
Choice 2: get my own little mini-office. Basically it’s standard cubicle-based office furniture inside a room with a door. It’s not very big, but it would be my first-ever “own office”.
One thing that makes the choice easier: my new department will be moving to a different building within the next couple of months, so my choice really only impacts the near term. What think ye, friends and readers?
Book Review: <em>The Echo Within</em> by Robert Benson
There is a particular class of inspirational book these days that you can identify on the shelf without even looking at the content. First is the book’s size - usually no larger than 5 by 8 inches. Second is the cover art - typically a scenic vista or natural landscape, meant to soothe and inspire. I didn’t get a look at the cover art before I agreed to accept a free copy of The Echo Within from Waterbrook Press and review it on my blog, but as soon as I pulled it out of the envelope, I started to wonder. Is this gonna be another one of those fluffy inspirational books?
Robert Benson is the author of over a dozen books, all of which he describes on his website as being about one thing: “paying attention”. Says Benson:
I write about paying attention for the things that can point us to the Sacred in our lives. About the longings that we have for home and community and a sense of belonging. About practice and ritual and work and contemplation and the way that such things can be constant reminders of who we are and who we are to become.
And in this little volume, as you might guess from its title, Benson urges us to listen to “the echo within” - the little voice within ourselves that gives us some inclination of choices we should make, directions we should take, things we should believe. In the first chapter he describes it this way:
I am coming to believe that the small voice within me is an echo of the Voice that is still speaking the incarnate word that I am here to become, an echo of the Voice that spoke us all into being, an echo of the Voice that spoke all that is alive.
Sometimes we are hesitant to trust that small voice within us because we think it is just ourselves doing the talking… because we have heard a similar voice inside us say things that are hurtful and angry and hateful, to ourselves and about others.
We must learn to listen deeper and deeper, seeking out the true voice within us that echoes the Voice of the One Who made us…
The fact that the Voice that calls to us often sounds like our own is not something to be mistrusted or feared. It is a sign of how close God is to us.
Benson has some good insights in The Echo Within about recognizing the talents, inclinations, and desires that God has built into us - sometimes we do tend to make this whole “God’s leading” thing more difficult than it needs to be - but on the whole Benson strays just a little too far in the “listen to your inner voice” direction, with no balance of recognizing the Truth that is revealed to us in Scripture.
For the person running weary and needing some quiet encouragement, The Echo Within might be a nice little volume to pick up. Read and consider it with discernment, though. That inner voice might be God, but then again, it might not be.
Bullet points for a Tuesday Morning #2
Laziness, and no big topics to contemplate. Put those two together and you end up with my blog as of late. Sorry folks. So, a make-up post of sorts.
- Only four more weeks until the baby is due. I’m sure we don’t really understand quite how life will change going from 2 to 3 kids, but we’ll figure it out. Excitement is building among all the residents of our little home. (Well, maybe not among the cats.)
- We’re now several weeks in to our first Stonebridge small group and we’re really enjoying it. It’s fun to make some new friends. I did get a few weird looks last night when I briefly touched on the whole gay marriage thing, but my lament about Christians being known more for their support of Prop 8 than for their love for their neighbor was well-received.
- I’m applying for a new position here at work - a fantastic opportunity. Not going to say too much about it here just now, but I have an interview tomorrow at 1 pm.
- Another thing that’s sneaking up on us - Laura will turn 5 this summer, and so the school questions start coming up. We’ve pretty well decided to homeschool her for the time being, and communicated that intent to our local elementary school last month. Now I’ve gotta get the ins and outs of the homeschool support/oversight system understood in preparation for next fall. Oh, and sign up with HSLDA.
- When I have trouble coming up with something for the fifth bullet, you know that either things have been fairly uneventful or I’m just having a horrible time remembering anything. *sigh*
Book I Read: <em>The Weapon</em> by David Poyer
Normally I’d write up a whole 250-word review for a book I finished, but The Weapon by David Poyer just doesn’t inspire that sort of review. I’ve enjoyed Poyer’s other Dan Lenson novels but this one was really just okay. A middling, disjointed story at best. As big a fan as I was of Tom Clancy back in the 90’s, I should be the last to criticize authors for hanging on and writing a long series around a single character, but Poyer appears to be the next in a long line of authors that have burned out their series that way (see also: Tom Clancy, Dale Brown).
So, yeah, I read it, and was mildly entertained… but only mildly. It’s time for these authors to start writing some creative plots instead of just stringing us along for yet another novel featuring the same guy in similar situations. Bleh.
Adventures with Hot Water, or, Providential Timing Once Again
Last night after Wednesday night church, as we were just about to settle down for the night, Becky called out to me from downstairs. It wasn’t her usual voice, asking me for something - this was her oh-no-this-is-trouble voice. “Chris I need you downstairs.” When I got downstairs, I got part two of the announcement. “We’ve got water all over the floor.” Now, the words “water on the floor” bring back instant connotations of the flood last summer. Fortunately, though, what we found wasn’t anything near so troubling. Which is not to say that we were very happy about it, since there were puddles of warm water all around the floor near the water heater.
I pulled out a flashlight and confirmed my suspicions: the water heater had developed a leak and was dripping the last of its contents out onto the floor. I turned off the water and gas feeds to the heater and Becky got out the towels. (One nice side-benefit of the flood: we now have a large supply of towels that are good for nothing but wiping up the floor.) We wiped up the remaining mess and then, rather than settling down to watch a little bit of TV, pulled out the computer to do some online water heater research. My posts to Twitter and Facebook evoked sympathy, advice, and at least one offer to help with an install. But having neither the time nor really the know-how to do the install, I decided to head for Lowe’s this morning, based on their proximity to our place and a good recommendation from a friend.
I had a one-hour window this morning to leave work, purchase the water heater and arrange for install, and get back to work before my meeting started. It was a quick trip to Lowe’s, and I found that at 8:00 in the morning there are plenty of employees there and ready to help. I selected my heater of choice, ponied up for installation and the city permit, and headed back to work. The woman at Lowe’s figured there was no way we’d get it installed today, hopefully tomorrow, otherwise it’d be Monday. I offered a quick prayer for an installer with some free time and headed back to work. Thirty minutes later I got the phone call back from the installer. Would I be available today at 11:00? So providential timing number one: we were able to get the heater installed the same morning.
It’s a nice water heater, too - high efficiency, 50-gallon, eligible for a rebate from the gas company, 12-year warranty, etc. And, so far as I can tell, it heats water nicely. (My shower tonight was quite pleasant.) Oh, so on to providential timing number two: our income tax refund got deposited to our bank account yesterday. It’s not how we’d planned to use the money, but it is sure a blessing to have it there for the need.
Thus concludes this chapter of the Mundane Adventures of Chris in Iowa. Tune in this weekend to find out about Chris’s first time on the Stonebridge worship team. Good night.
Book Review: <em>The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music</em> by Ben Ratliff
Normally when we think about musicians and “their music”, we think about the music that they write, perform, and record. But author Ben Ratliff (jazz critic for the New York Times) decided to ask a different question. What do these musicians listen to and find influential? What are they thinking and hearing as they listen to the music? So Ratliff met with a dozen or so noted jazz musicians, asked them what tracks they’d like to listen to, and then relates to us the experience and conversations of listening to the music with the musicians. The result is The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music. It turns out to be fascinating stuff.
Though I am a musician and fancy myself a fan (though not a hardcore aficionado) of jazz, it quickly became clear to me that the plane these guys think on is just incredibly high. It is fascinating in its own way, though, listening to serious jazz players talk about how they think about jazz. My favorite part of the book, though, was the reference list at the back, where Ratliff lists each recording that he listened to with each of the musicians. It has been a great input for my personal playlist… so much to explore.
If you’re a musician, like jazz, or just want to explore the minds of some great musicians, I’d recommend picking up The Jazz Ear. It’s a short read, but quite worth it.
[You can buy The Jazz Ear from Amazon.com.]