As predicted, it's been a busy, busy weekend. Spent most of Saturday
writing software (managed to drum out a neat thread manager in C#,
which provides me better flexibility than the thread pool - layman's
terms: a really good piece of code to execute several other pieces of
code at once).
Whilst
working I had my headphones on and was head banging (as much as one can
head bang with a large screen in front of one's face) to some more
Rammstein. I'd been listening to
Reise, Reise a lot until I found
Sehnsucht
- waaaaayyy cool
(okay, if you're a Rammstein nut then I'm way out
of date, but I've always been one for being behind the curve when it
comes to cool things like the music scene).
Went baby sitting on Saturday evening. A couple friend of ours has an
infant baby girl, about 6 months younger than Simon, so we're trying
out an arrangement, which enables each of couple a weekend evening out
every now and again. I arrived early evening and our friends explained
the feeding schedule, diaper changing location and the bedtime rituals.
I really enjoyed the fact that their methods weren't too different to
those that Lisa and I practice with Simon (except that they had a
really cool diaper disposing device that we didn't). I think that
existing parents make the best baby sitters, there's nothing
worst than explaining to a teenager the intricacies in fitting a diaper
to a wriggly child, and yes, they really eat that goo that comes out of
those tiny jars.
Diaper changing time was a funny moment - I have been so used to
changing Simon for the last 15 months that when I opened her diaper I
was shocked when I didn't see a penis there. I'm not sure what I was
expecting to see, not like I didn't know that girls have this piece of
anatomy missing, I think I forgot who I was changing for a moment there.
The great thing about baby sitting for infants is that they go to bed
early with minimum fuss, so most of the duty of baby sitting is spent being
around in case they wake up. Baby went to bed at 7pm, so spent the
remainder of the evening catching up some reading - I'm reading
State
of Fear by
Michael Crichton.
Saturday evening brought about freezing rain. Luckily I was driving the 4x4 so made light of the slick roads.
Sunday - more coding, managed to expand my thread manager some more.
The freezing rain of Saturday night had turned into snow throughout
most of Sunday, so I went out to clear the driveway in the afternoon
after it had stopped coming down. I was expecting an easier job than
last week.
However, when I removed the top layer of snow I found sheet ice
underneath. The next three hours was spent salting, breaking ice
patches and shoveling - back breaking work. Simon came out about mid
way through to supervise and tell me that I had missed a piece. My wife
had a great idea to use the garden spade to break up the ice before
shoveling with the snow scoop - made life much easier
.