a lot has happened since my last diary.  where to begin?  i got "promoted" into management.  so far the only difference is an office and the bump in pay.  no complaints yet.  it's just a job.  but the window is nice.

our little dude is awesome.  he's growing like a weed.  when we are around other babies it comes back to me that he's a big guy.  he sits up nicely and is so close to crawling it's not even funny.  he laughs a lot.  that's my favorite part.  i could listen to that little giggle all day long.  he's the best.

before we took off for my homeland on vacation, i finally started building a guitar.  that project was sidetracked about a year and a half ago by the above.  there's a lot of work that goes into making a baby and it doesn't leave a lot of room for non-critical projects.  the point is that i'm having a good time with it.  i'll post some photos soon.  it's a simple OM style steel string.  so far, so good.

last week we headed off to the frozen northlands.  we spent 7 days in the state of my birth.  that's more time that i've spent there since about '96 or so.  let's just say that my mom loves my wife.  my more extended family got to meet the dude.  that included my great aunt (his first great-great relative!) and my grandmother.  i swear that boy didn't touch the ground for a week.  he also got to sleep between mommy and daddy, a personal favorite of his.  every day at 7 a.m. he'd start swatting his mom.  when she opened her eyes, he'd smile and giggle.  without delay he'd roll over and apply the same treatment to me.  once we were both awake he would kick and laugh and then i'd get up and throw him to the first old lady i could find.  that bought us an extra hour of sleep most days.  nice.  very nice.

while in the northern lands we experienced 12+ inches of snow and then 60F temperatures in the same week.  home sweet home.  if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.  we also took a night to go drink coffee and then down a bottle of wine at my brother's new house with my cousin, his fiancee and a childhood friend.  lots of talking and laughing.  plenty of jokes at my expense.  a great time.

we also spent some time with one of my oldest friends and his new baby.  the dude was quite intrigued by the wee one.  they didn't do the baby talk thing, but i think that the dude asserted his dominance by demonstrating his superior coordination and verbal skills (volume).  it was great to see my bud and his new kid.  it was a stealth baby (they lost their first late in the term but had a success story with their oldest boy so they aren't big on talking about those things before they hatch and all that).  i wish i'd met the older one, but he was asleep at his grandparents' place around the corner and couldn't be arsed to play.  smart kid.

i did visit my uncle's grave.  i hadn't seen the headstone.  it suddenly felt like forever since i'd been home.  i only stayed a couple of minutes, stacky and the baby were in the car.  the pain was fresh.  i forget...well, that's not the right word...i'm less focused on that loss most of the time.  putting it front and center again was difficult.  despite the fact that i'd been in my brother's house (formerly my uncle's place) and had seen some of his things around my mom's i somehow didn't make that connection.  when i did, i wished i hadn't.  i miss that old buzzard.

and that brings us back home to the republic.  i came back to work on wednesday.  it was a good choice.  3 days to clean up any messes and a short week to ease back into things.  but it's strange.  i feel a bit sad.  i miss my family and friends from "home."  i'm already dreading summer.  i want to get some of my project work done.  i'd like to spend some time on this and that but i'm discovering that there are fewer hours in the day than i had once believed.  so it goes.  i'm excited to note that an apogee duet sound interface should be on my doorstep tonight.  i can't wait to fire that up and take it around the block.  go bonus money!  but my overall mood is grey today.  i'm writing it off to vacation hangover.

maybe i'll get back to the more than quarterly diary sometime soon.