April 28th 2010

Things that don’t, it turns out, induce labor:

Long walks
Spicy foods
That one thing that always follows spicy foods
Jumping up and down singing “Have You Seen the Muffin Man”
Popping out from corners and screaming
Pretending to be asleep until your wife gets near and then sitting up and screaming
Pretending to fall asleep at the wheel
Throwing your wife on the bed
Pushing on your future baby
Reasoning with your future baby
Arguing with your future baby
Trampolines of any variety
Popping out from behind a truck and screaming

Pretty much, ain’t nobody having a baby around here. And Isabel doesn’t like me nearly as much as she used to. Maybe it’s all the popping out and screaming. ???

April 24th, 2010

So Isabel is eight months and three weeks along. Having a pregnant wife isn't all bad. I mean there's the moaning and the stretch marks and no room in the bed because her belly is taking up so much of it, but there's some opportunity for great comedy, too.

And by “comedy” I mean I get to tease my wife. This morning I touched her and said “The baby feels really lumpy, I wonder what this is.” I tried to look as serious as I could. She is exasperated, “Those are my ribs! What kind of a baby do you think I'm carrying?”

I say to her, “What if the baby comes out with three eyes?” Her reply was instant: “If he does then he got them from you!”

She's been great. Sometimes I feel like she's being grumpy or boring. But I've heard stories from other people, so I know what bad really is. She has a great attitude and a fantastic sense of humor. So I'm sure that this baby will have both a fantastic attitude and a great sense of humor.

Everyone expects the baby to be really cute. This puts stress on Isabel, who says, “I feel all this pressure to have a cute baby.” So I comforted her by saying, “If he's ugly people are really going to be disappointed.”

Any day now. Hopefully sooner than later.

April 19th, 2010

I’ve been very hesitant to talk about this because I don’t want to get too excited before I get into it and find myself disappointed. I have a new job, and right now it feels awesome.

I’ve been working for IHC for the past four years. I got my AS degree in laboratory technology because at the time I was interested in the medical field and this was a secure job. And it has been. While some industries have been suffering and laying off people, the clinical lab has been adding jobs. People always get sick.

I got my BS degree in organizational communication because I actually loved that field. It was about teaching adults and technical writing and as most of you know, I love writing. I want to write for a living. So I’ve been applying for various jobs when they ever pop up. My problem has been a lack of experience.

So I was very excited when the chance to work somewhere other than IHC turned up. Of course I had my reservations. While a lot of people have lost their jobs or taken pay cuts, I’ve held steady. The lab has security. It gives me a convenient work schedule. I like the quirky people I work with. I even like the normal people I work with. It offers better benefits, decent pay, and it’s closer to my house than my new job will be.

But the new job offers something else: opportunity. At IHC I have none. They want people with bachelor’s degrees in lab technology to do their managing, writing, and training, even though as far as I’ve seen, they suck at it. I have a degree and am talented, to various levels, in those areas but they won’t consider me. They effectively turned this into a dead-end job.

The new job has opportunities. I get to learn things I really want to learn. I get to be challenged in ways I never have before. There is an actual corporate ladder, pay raises, lots of things. I will be writing and working with web pages beyond my present skill. It won’t be easy, but it will give me experience in the field I want as my career. More time at IHC will not do that for me.

Among the challenges are some that you might not expect. I’ve never worked in an office before, and I’m a little nervous about that. I’ve never worn “business casual.” I’ve always done manual labor of some sort, and this is computer-based and really different from my experience. So I have worse jitters about this than any other job I’ve ever had. I hope everything works out.

Wish me the best of luck!

Hello.
This is my first blog post. I don't know exactly what I plan on doing with this blog, most likely a jumble of different things. And if you're reading this, hooray.

Anyway the blogosphere seemed like an interesting environment that I haven't gotten involved in yet, so now I'm here. Some of what you'll read will be reprints of things I write on my facebook Notes page or my website, www.antechron.com.

I enjoy getting comments on what I write so if you have something to say, edits to make or strong disagreements, please feel free to tell me what you're thinking, even if I don't know who in the world you are. You may hate what I write, or you may choose like some to not hate what I write.

Either way, I am at least as interesting as the other people out there blogging, so here I am.