Those Martins

I woke up around 5am and wasn’t able to fall back asleep. I got out of bed, read some news feeds, confirmed that my fantasy football team clinched a playoff spot, and finished writing yesterday’s journal entry. I checked my computer and noticed that my photo backup hadn’t been running for the past month. I fixed my backup script, then kicked it off. It spent over an hour backing up our latest photos to Joyent Strongspace.

While eating breakfast, I started reading The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher (now that I’m done reading Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan). I quickly realized one thing: I’m familiar with the concept of the British parliamentary system, but I’m completely lost on the details. The book is very interesting, but also very confusing.

I finally managed to put it down and leave for the office. After a quick stop to pick up some contacts for my wife, I got into the office at 9:30am. The morning was busy but not overwhelmingly so. I spent the afternoon in class once again, but was able to leave by 5pm.

Five minutes after I walked in the door, the entire family walked back out the door. We went down the street for dinner at BrouxNellie’s. I had the chicken finger club sandwich, Christine had a burger, and Esther turned her nose up at some delicious macaroni & cheese soup. Esther spent most of her time twisting every which way in her high chair to check out the other diners.

Christine dropped us off at home while she went out with some of the other mothers from church. I read while Esther played on the floor for about half an hour. (I also played on the floor with her, some.) Eventually she crawled over to me and looked like she was ready for bed. I changed her diaper, put her pajamas on and had her in bed by 7:40pm.

Five minutes later, she let me know that she was ready to get up again. Once she got up, she drank some water then played some more. After she pooped her diaper, she again crawled over to me and acted like she wanted to go to bed. I again changed her and put her to bed. She whimpered in the crib for about 15 minutes, so I got her up, rocked her a bit, and put her back to bed. This time she only whimpered for about 5 minutes before (apparently) deciding to fall alseep. Time alseep: 8:35pm.

I’ve been reading reviews of Amazon’s new eBook reader, the Kindle. I’m interested in the idea of an eBook reader (it beats the huge hardcover books I’m normally carrying around) and I like the new e-ink displays that are almost like reading off of a printed page. On the other hand, the Kindle costs $400. Odds are, Christine and I would both want to read it at the same time. That’s either one expensive gadget to fight over or one super-expensive buy for each of us. Still, I read a hands on review tonight that makes it sound worthwhile. And Neil Gaiman likes it.

A quick check of Amazon’s Kindle book store reveals that I couldn’t get any of the books that I’m currently reading — The Downing Street Years, Dutch: A Memoir, or Overcoming Sin and Temptation — in Kindle format. On the other hand, I could read G. K. Chesterton’s classic Orthodoxy for only $0.99. I could also get the text on the internet for free and load it onto the Kindle manually. While a Kindle might not, yet, be great for reading older, copyrighted books, it would be fantastic for reading classic public-domain books.

I’ll keep it in mind for Christmas money.

I spent the evening reading The Downing Street Years. I was too tired from waking up early to do much else. Christine came home around 10:15p and we went to bed shortly afterwards.