La Familia Brophy

Yesterday I heard from Simmons that I can take a course I had been on the wait list for. The class, Management of Knowledge in Large Organizations, started this morning and lasted half the day. It will be all day next Friday and Saturday as well. It’s taught by an IBM consultant named Eric Lesser, a dynamic and knowledgable instructor. It’s bit more of a business class than I’d anticipated, but I should be able to apply it to my work.

The instructor lived his first 30 years in New York, and said he grew up in the Bronx. I don’t know where Jerry Seinfeld is from, but they’ve got the exact same accent. The thing is that Eric Lesser isn’t that funny. I mean he’s average funny, but Knowledge Management ain’t standup. And yet I keep feeling like what he says is meant to be a joke. I try not be dissappointed when the story of how British Petrolium designed a knowledge sharing experience for oil rig captains doesn’t build to a crescendo of laughter.

Nathan has gotten very good at sitting up on his own. Here is a photo of him doing just that.

Note the funny smile he makes now when I try to get him to smile for the camera (usually he scrunches up his nose a bit more). Unfortunately we haven’t had much sun so the photos all come out blury. Well, that’s it. I really just wanted to post a picture.

Back in December I revealed my iTunes top ten list. On January 14th my play list was lost in a tragic accident. I didn’t loose any music, but every songs’ play count was reset to 0. Here’s the new list that has developed.

1. A Dios Le Pido - Juanes, 2002
2. La Unica - Juanes, 2002
3. Todavia - La Factoria, 2002
4. Suavemente - Elvis Crespo, 1998
5. Earthcrusher - Mr. Lif, 2002
6. Demonseed ‘03 - DJ Spooky, 2003
7. Luna - Juanes, 2002
8. La Noche - Juanes, 2002
9. Sex and Candy - Marcy Playground, 1997
10. Not In My Name - Saul Williams/DJ Spooky, 2003

Half of the songs are by Juanes, the Colombian rock star. He is a favorite of Lisa and Nathan’s and I like him pretty well too. Nathan gets all quiet and listens carefully when Juanes plays. This is especially handy if he’s been fussing. Lisa went to see Juanes in concert last weekend.

The only song on both the old and new list is Suavemente by Elvis Crespo. It and Todavia are great song, and benefit from being on the same play list as Juanes.

I don’t know where Sex and Candy came from. It’s what I call a “Tim’s Car Song” which is any of a set of late nineties pop hits that we used to hear playing on Kiss 108 when Tim drove us from his apartment in Somerville to ours in East Cambridge. It’s a very specific genre.

If any one out there wants to share their top 10, I’d love to see it!

Maybe everyone else has seen it, and most were disappointed, but I still had to see Matrix II. Rob and I saw it at the Dedham Showcase, Metro Boston’s crappiest movie theater, which is conveniently close to our homes. The audience was full of vulgar teenagers (kids today!). I was feeling ready to be disappointed. I’m glad I had low expectiations - in the end I had a lot of fun. The movie was so loud the worst generation ever and the lousy theater were muted. The special effect were gratuitous, but I love watching cars explode in slow motion. There is plenty of new stuff to think about. Even if this film isn’t groundbreaking, I think it did a fine job adding a little to the Matrix story. I can’t wait to see the next one.

I have another obsession besides the cloth diapers. It is baby slings. I take Nathan pretty much everywhere in one. It is so much easier than folding up a stroller to get on the commuter rail or bus or finding elevators down dark hallways in the T stations.

I can’t understand why it is considered “alternative” to carry your baby in sling. Babies love to be held so it just seems natural. I love having Nathan right up near my face level so I can give him kisses whenever I want. And as I mentioned it is just so much easier.

I’ve been pretty content with our Over the Shoulder Baby Holder but it is getting a little ratty looking as we got it second hand. Recently I’ve discovered many other options. I am definitely not the only one who is obsessed, in fact compared to many I am not. I recently joined an email list for “babywearing” as it is called. People give their reviews of various slings and advice about how to use them. Of course the problem with this is that now I know about many more slings that I would like to try out like the Hug-a-bub and the Ellaroo.

I just ordered the Packababy and it shipped today so I should have it soon. Today I made one that is similar to the Ellaroo and I think that I finally found the best way to tie it on (it took a few tries). Here is Nathan having fun sucking on my shirt while all cozy in his new sling:

My boss brought in Krispy Kreme donuts donated by Apple Computer. MIT’s Apple rep passed them on to us since he knows we are such a Mac-centric group. I’m guessing that the fact that Katie’s husband is a Mac developer at MIT doesn’t hurt either. The sugary gesture has softened my heart towards Apple even as my arteries harden from the fat.

Lisa sent me a link today to the Social Security Administration’s baby name statistics. I found it just fascinating. Interesting facts:

• “Nathan” is the 29th most popular name in 2002 (right after my name at #28). Nathan has become more popular every year for the last 12.
• “Lisa” was #364. How could “Lisa” be such an unpopular name? In the year Lisa was born, it was #3. What happenned?
• “Monica” is around number 190, dropping 100 slots since 1998. But how could it still be more popular than Lisa?
• “Adolph” hasn’t even been in the top 1000 for the last 12 years. It is just a cursed name.
• “George” has become less popular since the president was “elected.”

There’s tons more. I could spend hours looking at the various stasistics.

Yesterday Nathan turned 8 months old. That means that 6 months have passed since we first met. Ben and I were thinking about those first days together back in Cali. It was amazing how this beautiful little baby was placed in our arms. We didn’t know him at all then and now we know him so well. It is hard to believe that Nathan then and Nathan now are the same boy. Now thinking back we can so easily recognize his facial expressions and behaviors.

Well at eight months Nathan is more amazing than ever. He sits up on his own (we still sit behind him though just in case). He has two little teeth that bite whatever is in the way. Just yesterday he started making very real attempts at crawling. He pushes up and rocks and today he even took a little scoot forward in this way .

It used to be that Nathan was fairly unaware of his surroundings but this is changing dramatically. When Ben would come home he would have to get right in front of Nathan and say hi. Today when he came in after being out Nathan heard him open the door and he kept looking in that direction until Papi found us. He laughs so much now too. He laughs at peek-a-boo, tickling and funny jokes.

Ahhh. The joy of Nathan grows and grows.

I’ve been on a learning binge for the last 4 months. There is so much I want to know! The cataloging class at Simmons got me going on Dublin Core and Information Architecture. I’ve been crazy for standards based web design using xhtml and css ever since going to SXSW. I am learning more about search engines (I am desperate to install a proper internal search engine on this site). I am eager to learn some form of light cgi programming (maybe REBOL…). I have been reading several great library and information architecture blogs. Eventually I’ll make a page of links to these resources, my bookmarks are currently scattered between several computers and browsers. I wish I was interested in just one of these things and learning it well. I’m such a dilletante studying two or three topics for 30-40 minutes a day. I don’t start my next Simmons class (Information Design) until the end of June.

Nathan’s been busy too. He’s been learning to make interesting noises. Tonight at dinner we played this game where he would slap the table 3-5 times, then Lisa and I would repeat the pattern. He seemed o learn the game pretty quick and would slap out a new pattern for us after we’d done ours. He’s also been doing alot of vocalizing. And he’s listening too. Lisa says “Where’s Papi?” and looks over at me. Cool! Ok, he looks at me about 75% of the time sometimes he’s just like “WHAT are you going on about?”

I wonder if nathan’s got me inspired. Here we are thinking about stuff together after dinner tonight:

I did something truly American tonight. I am no longer an in-country ex-patriot. I watched American Idol. I was over at Michelle and Rob’s picking something up, and it was on and I just got sucked in. I can see why it’s so popular - it’s a great formula. I think Ruben and Clay are going to make it to the finals. I almost stayed for 24, but I decided to pace myself. Maybe for the finale next week.