All things new

My sister left today for Namibia - for 11 months of teaching. A change this big is a leap of faith. I know she is nervous, worried, emotionally exhausted from saying goodbye to family and friends and perhaps wanting to run back to home. Yet, she leaped, or at least walked, onto the plane anyway.

Mike starts his new job next week. My first GMU grad class begins in January as well. We've now visited five churches here. 2009 is starting off with almost too much "new" and not enough old. I'm not sure I want to make any "new" year's resolutions.

Getting current

Early adopters face a special challenge: when the technology is fully vetted and the field of competition sifted through to determine the leaders, early adopters can find themselves on outdated platforms and/or paying more than everyone else. Not really fair, but how the world works.

So, as early adopters of personal websites ("blog" wasn't a word then), our family website has been running for a few years. The interface is okay, but a little clunky by today's standards and (horror) we are paying a monthly fee for it.

Time to migrate. Painful. More work. Decisions about what to keep and what to delete. But, it is Advent season, the time of waiting and preparing. So, I figured I can use a little of that time to launch a new, more modern blog for the family. Here it is. I'll try to move the more worthwhile parts of the old site here (yes, the toilet paper counting episode of Mike's will be migrated).

Sleep: Overrated

Doctors and researchers always want to push sleep on us. Get more sleep, they say. At least 8 hours, they recommend. You won't function well if you don't. You'll be stressed and out of focus. You'll gain weight (okay, that one might be true given my late night snacking habits).

I'm hear to tell you as a single parent for the past 3 weeks that the doctors and researchers have not factored everything. If you are able to knock out three hours of billable work in the peace and quiet of past bedtime hours while also ordering the family's Christmas cards and shopping for matching holiday sweaters for the family, well, that is time well-spent and reduces your stress considerably. Sleep is good when you can get it. But, sometimes, that feeling of accomplishing and ticking off tasks on the ever-growing list is even better.

Gotta go now and finish the Christmas shopping before the midnight sale at Amazon ends.