Wow....two weeks since my last post. What can I say other than I have been very busy. I'm winding down on one project that has consumed my life this month and hope to finish up another important project soon as well. I should have more time to post the thoughts and miscellaneous items that have been queuing up in my head since that last post.
Anyway, a few things remain at the fore front of my mind after the early morning I had and I thought posting them here might help me focus on my code a bit better.
I was awakened at 2:45am this morning to my cell phone vibrating. That can only mean one thing - our DSL at my office was taking some time off for a nap and I was going to have angry customers in the morning. I called SBC to find out what was going on to learn that there was planned maintenance on our network scheduled for 3:00-6:00am and they are, of course, very sorry for the inconvenience. The funny thing is that I found out earlier this morning that a co-worker knew about this scheduled maintenance in advance. How? His SBC dialer told him. Nice to know that residential customers are informed of SBC planned maintenance, but the business customers (who pay 5x more) don't get a single heads up notice. There isn't even a web site I'm aware of where I can find this information, unlike for my RoadRunner cable connection at home. The woman I spoke to on the phone actually said I had to "roll with it". Right. I'm sure my customers would love me to quote her on that one.
Everything was fine in the land of DSL by 3:30am and I played two quick rounds of "Dead Man Walking" in Max Payne 2 to bleed off some stress before attempting to sleep again. As my luck shortly informed me, it was not to be so. My 15-month old daughter decided now was a good time to wake up and demand attention. Letting her cry in her crib for a while did nothing to abate the pleas for help, so I obliged and brought her in to bed with me.
Of course, she wanted to cuddle with her Mommy, who is 8 months pregnant and can't sleep on her aching back WITHOUT a 20 lbs. wiggle worm burrowing in to her. She eventually warmed up to the idea of cuddling with me. As I'm laying there in bed with her, her foot kept rocking back and forth into my leg which did nothing to encourage a visit from Mr. Sandman. I was getting slightly annoyed and was about to shift her in to a position where she wouldn't be playing hacky sack with my knee when I realized something.
My foot was doing the exact same thing.
My wife will be the first person on the planet to tell you that I am a fidgeter. I'm NEVER holding completely still for long. My hands are tracing lines on the wall, poking at the bars of our headboard, or petting our cat while we're in bed. Before I doze off to sleep and when I wake up, I'm always ticking my foot back and forth at the ankle like some kind of human grandfather clock. And now my daughter's curled up in to bed with me doing the same thing.
I wrote a while ago about how the introduction of something new to my daughter was an incredible and amazing experience no matter how simple of an explanation it has in the adult world. It's funny because now I realize that it shouldn't have been so shocking to me as I was just as awestruck at 4am this morning as she was in the bath tub that night watching as I poured water out of a cup in front of her. I shouldn't be so surprised that my daughter has traits from me. Common sense says that it will be true and if I was that lacking in common sense, I'd have the little bit of genetics I learned in biology to provide some backup for the left hand side of my brain.
People are always saying that my daughter has my wife's eyes and cheeks. She's got my temper and my wife's stubborness (lucky her). I've heard them all a thousand times. But it runs deeper than the things that any patient observer could relate to me after spending an hour with my family. It's moments like these in the early hours of the morning that really make me appreciate what it's like to be a father. It's almost enough to make me forget that I spent the next two hours sleeping on the couch with my daughter so my wife could get some sleep.
Almost. ;-)