This movie of Lauren dancing is almost a month old, but I just got around to uploading it.

The description on YouTube says:

Lauren was dancing like this months before she could walk. Now that she's been walking for a while, the dancing has gotten more involved: she spins circles, and puts her hand on her hand and revolves, and sometimes even puts one hand on a hip like she's doing a cha cha. Girl's got moves. This one is her dancing debut, though. ;-)

Someday Lauren is going to be old enough to realize that not every little girl spends a big piece of her life in front of a camera. That not all of her little friends have their pictures posted on public web sites for family and friends — and strangers — to gawk at.

That not every little girl has a crazy, doting "Opa."

I hope this works out. I hope she grows up knowing that she's beautiful no matter how she looks. That even though not every picture is perfect, she's always beautiful.

I hope, in fact, that she can be the kind of girl who is confident enough in herself to be honest and comfortable with the camera, without posing. Like she does now. Not beautiful like a model, but beautiful like someone that everybody wants to love, someone who loves and gives freely.

She won't become that person just because my camera can't take its eye off her, obviously, but I hope it helps (thinking about the attitude of the people behind the camera). Confident, comfortable, happy, warm, and full of brightness. We're off to a good start, but there are big obstacles in her path...

Remember the episode of StarTrek: The Next Generation when Data was studying humor and went onto the holodeck to interact with famous comedians? At first the computer gave him the funniest comedian of all time, but he specialized in math-humor and that was too specific (too focused, or vertical) for what Data wanted. (So, of course, he ended up with someone from the late 20th century. How convenient. Beside the point, too.)

That's what this makes me think of. It's an April Fool's joke that only javascripters will understand. Except, of course, it's not all that funny. Cute, but not hilarious.

I read through the comments... some big names there who thought it was funny enough to comment. Of course, the author of the joke is also the author of jQuery itself, which makes him a pretty big deal. Most of the commentors were probably just sucking up. ;-) (Same would have happened if Sam Stephenson posted something similar.)

Part of my standard morning routine is to go to the Dunkin Donuts, just a mile from my house, for an extra large coffee. This morning I was running a bit late and hadn't had any breakfast, so I ordered a bagel sandwich with it. My total came to $4.87, and I paid with my debit card as I usually do.

This evening, Corinne was looking at our online banking, and started yelling something like, "What the heck!?" I went to see what was wrong...

52 charges from Dunkin Donuts today. All different. Totaling hundreds of dollars!

Somehow, apparently, our credit card number got stuck in their drive through's cash register.

We'll obviously be disputing these charges, in the morning.

The most annoying thing about this, for me, is that two days ago the bank called me to verify that I had actually authorized AT&T to charge me $50 to add a line to my wireless account. "Yes, of course I did." But do they call to find out if I authorized DD to charge me for 52 orders in one morning?!? No. Which one of these two things looks more suspicious, hmm?

“Life at the Dillingham House”

(At least, that's what I was trying to say. Flip?)

It's 2008 already. When did that happen?

Lauren is over ten months old already. Not walking by herself yet, but she's learning to imitate us: she waves, whispers "kitty", and of course says "dadadadadada" all the time. She can crawl at about 32 mph. Her favorite thing is playing "boo" with me or Corinne. Her least favorite thing is seeing any of her toys stacked up. Just put one block on top of another, and she'll streak across the room to knock them down.

Shannon should be coming home this month. Still waiting for the home inspection.

Mike is still up at Osborn C.I., but he's been moved into "the program", so he has a little more freedom, more social interaction, and a little less boredom.

Corinne spends most of her days cooking and taking care of Lauren (somebody's going to misread that and find it funny or disturbing), napping in the afternoons, then enjoying her time off in the evenings.

Me? I'm pretty much on the same schedule i've been on since Lauren started sleeping through the night (at six weeks). Up around 7, work most of the day, come up in the evening to have dinner and watch (play with) Lauren until it's time for her to go to bed. Then I tell myself I'm going to work until I go to bed, but I end up playing Scrabble (online, it's actually called Scrabulous) until bedtime.

PMC registration has already opened, and I've already started (casually) looking for sponsors.

Now you're all caught up. Any more questions?