Erika's public outings
We have made some sporadic attempts to take Erika out in public. Steve doesn't feel nervous about it, but to me it's like taking the proverbial elephant into a china shop. I'm not sure how efficiently I could handle her public cries. It's one thing to try to soothe a crying baby at home, and quite another when being subject to strangers' angry glares. But, I've been on the giving end of the latter, and it's time for me to take my own medicine.
Other than a pediatrician's visit and Steve taking her to work to show her off, we only took Erika for two outings to Tuscany, a store/restaurant/coffeeshop combo designed to give the inhabitants of this piece of Austin suburbia an illusion of being edgy urban hipsters. It's within half a mile from Riata apartment complex, where we live; but I suspect that most residents, when given a choice I presented Steve with the other day -- "would you like to walk over to Tuscany like a cool urban hipster, or drive like a fat-ass American?" -- take the latter. Anyway, we needed to justify our investment in a stroller, as well as peel my butt off the couch where it has begun to take roots, so we walked over to Tuscany. The first time Erika slept all throughout the trip. The second time, no sooner we opened a beer than she started screeching. And Tuscany is not the kind of place where breeders with shrieking babies could feel at home! Well, actually, its patrons are too polite to do anything but ignore us. And Erika's screams are so much less potent amidst the noise of a Friday night crowd than they are in an otherwise quiet apartment at 2 am. And we were sitting outside anyway, where it's more excusable. Still, Steve got up and took her for a stroller ride around the block, which calmed her down a little, just long enough for us to gulp our beers and head home.
Yesterday we took her to a library. We spent all of 10 minutes there, but that was enough for her to start whimpering, so I took her outside. Steve picked up the two books we came here for, Dan Simmons' Endymion and Ilium. I didn't get any for myself since I still have a stack of science fiction books at home I haven't read. Although, I have to say, baby-caring schedule gives me more time to read than I had before. In pre-baby days the only time I had to read was on a stairmaster and while doing stretches. Nowadays, breastfeeding pretty much ties me to a couch for something like 8 hours every day. During those times I either read internet news or books. There's nothing like a good book to help me through those night feedings, when I need a serious mental distraction to overcome tiredness and searing shoulder pain caused, no doubt, by bad posture while breastfeeding.
So I've made a good progress on Charles Stross' Singularity Sky. It's more original than most science fiction I've read in years, and quite intriguing. Hard not to respect the author for creating a credible speculation on post-singularity civilization. And the characters are more lifelike and convincing than in Stross' short stories (such as "Nightfall" and it's sequel what's-it-called.) One thing I found a little jarring are occasional references to contemporary (to Stross, that is) science fiction writers, such as "Vingian singularity" and "Sterling fugue" (the latter, I guess, refers to the rejuvenation process in Bruce Sterling's "Holy Fire"?). Yeah, right, the people of 20nth century post-singularity civilization use terminology invented by the 20th century SF writers? OK, the reference to Vernor Vinge may be somewhat plausible -- after all, it was he who popularized the idea of singularity -- but "Sterling fugue"? Is it this kind of flattery that causes Bruce Sterling to say Stross is one of the hottest SF writers of today? :-) (Just kidding. I agree with the last statement anyway.)
Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to see Charles Stross at this year's ArmadilloCon.
Tonight I also managed to install Mambo (an open source content management system) on my Linux machine. It would have been trivial for someone well-familiar with MySQL and PHP, but not so for me. I had to read up on MySQL to solve some installation errors. And even after all this I get a PHP error when trying to use Mambo. So, more reading and debugging to be done. At least it keeps my brain from turning to mush.
Other than a pediatrician's visit and Steve taking her to work to show her off, we only took Erika for two outings to Tuscany, a store/restaurant/coffeeshop combo designed to give the inhabitants of this piece of Austin suburbia an illusion of being edgy urban hipsters. It's within half a mile from Riata apartment complex, where we live; but I suspect that most residents, when given a choice I presented Steve with the other day -- "would you like to walk over to Tuscany like a cool urban hipster, or drive like a fat-ass American?" -- take the latter. Anyway, we needed to justify our investment in a stroller, as well as peel my butt off the couch where it has begun to take roots, so we walked over to Tuscany. The first time Erika slept all throughout the trip. The second time, no sooner we opened a beer than she started screeching. And Tuscany is not the kind of place where breeders with shrieking babies could feel at home! Well, actually, its patrons are too polite to do anything but ignore us. And Erika's screams are so much less potent amidst the noise of a Friday night crowd than they are in an otherwise quiet apartment at 2 am. And we were sitting outside anyway, where it's more excusable. Still, Steve got up and took her for a stroller ride around the block, which calmed her down a little, just long enough for us to gulp our beers and head home.
Yesterday we took her to a library. We spent all of 10 minutes there, but that was enough for her to start whimpering, so I took her outside. Steve picked up the two books we came here for, Dan Simmons' Endymion and Ilium. I didn't get any for myself since I still have a stack of science fiction books at home I haven't read. Although, I have to say, baby-caring schedule gives me more time to read than I had before. In pre-baby days the only time I had to read was on a stairmaster and while doing stretches. Nowadays, breastfeeding pretty much ties me to a couch for something like 8 hours every day. During those times I either read internet news or books. There's nothing like a good book to help me through those night feedings, when I need a serious mental distraction to overcome tiredness and searing shoulder pain caused, no doubt, by bad posture while breastfeeding.
So I've made a good progress on Charles Stross' Singularity Sky. It's more original than most science fiction I've read in years, and quite intriguing. Hard not to respect the author for creating a credible speculation on post-singularity civilization. And the characters are more lifelike and convincing than in Stross' short stories (such as "Nightfall" and it's sequel what's-it-called.) One thing I found a little jarring are occasional references to contemporary (to Stross, that is) science fiction writers, such as "Vingian singularity" and "Sterling fugue" (the latter, I guess, refers to the rejuvenation process in Bruce Sterling's "Holy Fire"?). Yeah, right, the people of 20nth century post-singularity civilization use terminology invented by the 20th century SF writers? OK, the reference to Vernor Vinge may be somewhat plausible -- after all, it was he who popularized the idea of singularity -- but "Sterling fugue"? Is it this kind of flattery that causes Bruce Sterling to say Stross is one of the hottest SF writers of today? :-) (Just kidding. I agree with the last statement anyway.)
Regardless, I'm very much looking forward to see Charles Stross at this year's ArmadilloCon.
Tonight I also managed to install Mambo (an open source content management system) on my Linux machine. It would have been trivial for someone well-familiar with MySQL and PHP, but not so for me. I had to read up on MySQL to solve some installation errors. And even after all this I get a PHP error when trying to use Mambo. So, more reading and debugging to be done. At least it keeps my brain from turning to mush.